Reducing the diffraction artifacts while implementing a phase function on a spatial light modulator

Céline Benoit-Pasanau (1) , François Goudail (1) , Pierre Chavel (1) , Jean-Paul Cano (2) , Jérôme Ballet (2)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Scop
2 Essilor International

Spatial light modulators are often used to implement phase modulation. Since they are pixelated, the phase function is usually approximated by a regularly sampled piecewise constant function, and the periodicity of the pixel sampling generates annoying diffraction peaks. We theoretically investigate two pixelation techniques: the isophase method and a new nonperiodic method derived from the Voronoi tessellation technique.We show that, for a suitable choice of parameters, the diffraction peaks disappear and are replaced by a smoothly varying halo. We illustrate the potential of these two techniques for implementing a lens function and wavefront correction.

Keywords: diffraction; spatial light modulators; artefacts

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Céline Benoit-Pasanau, François Goudail, Pierre Chavel, Jean-Paul Cano, Jérôme Ballet. Reducing the diffraction artifacts while implementing a phase function on a spatial light modulator. Applied optics, 2011, 50 (9), pp.509-518. ⟨10.1364/AO.50.000509⟩. ⟨hal-00564763⟩