Modulation of coherence and polarization using liquid crystal spatial light modulators

Abstract

We propose a method for modulation of coherence and polarization of electromagnetic fields, employing two crossed zero-twisted nematic liquid crystal spatial light modulators. In contrast to a similar technique analyzed by Shirai and Wolf [J. Opt. Soc. Am A, 21, 1907, (2004)] our method provides a wide range simultaneous modulation of coherence and polarization. The dependence of the obtained results on different definitions of electromagnetic coherence is considered.

Using the Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulators for Control of Coherence and Polarization of Optical Beams

“…To avoid the shortcomings mentioned above, the authors (Ostrovsky et al, 2009) proposed to use instead of a single 0º-twist LC-SLM the system of two 0º-twist LC-SLMs coupled in series as shown in Fig. 5.…”

Generation of partially coherent beams with controllable time-dependent coherence

“…Several optical elements, including rotating ground glass (RGG), dielectric elastomeric actuator, and spatial light modulator (SLM), are adapted to impose the random phase. [14][15][16][17] The disadvantage of an RGG is that the random phase is difficult to be quantitatively controlled. Although using an SLM can quantitatively control the coherence of the light, the coherence of the light remains invariant in most of the studies.…”

“…Although using an SLM can quantitatively control the coherence of the light, the coherence of the light remains invariant in most of the studies. 14,[16][17][18][19][20][21] Furthermore, some studies are limited to the theoretical simulations 14,18 or focused only on the intensity distribution. 16,19,20 To the best of our knowledge, the generation of partially coherent beam with temporally variable coherence by using an SLM has not been reported.…”

Experimentally generating any desired partially coherent Schell-model source using phase-only control

“…A vast majority of this work has focused on generating Gaussian Schell-model (GSM) sources and their many variants. [28][29][30][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] These techniques can roughly be divided into two groups-those which exploit the van CittertZernike theorem 32,[50][51][52] and most relevant to this work, those which use diffusers or spatial light modulators (SLMs) to produce GSM sources. [28][29][30][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]49 The SLM-based synthesis techniques predominately use phase-only SLMs because of their widespread commercial availability.…”