Spatially resolved phase-response calibration of liquid-crystal-based spatial light modulators

Methods for measuring and compensating the nonlinear electro-optical effect of transmissive, parallel-aligned liquid crystal (LC)-based spatial light modulators (SLMs) are presented. Particularly, the analysis is focused on the spatial nonuniformity of the voltage versus phase modulation characteristics for an active-matrix-driven, electrically controlled birefringence type LC-SLM. A high-quality reconstruction from phase-only modulating SLMs requires a well-calibrated phase addressing across the entire SLM panel. I discuss how the commonly inherent phase-response inhomogeneity of LC-SLM is characterized by purposeful localized measurement techniques. This phase-response inhomogeneity is efficiently compensated by utilizing a Legendre polynomial representation in combination with a remapping of an 8 bit gray level addressing. The calibration procedure is corroborated by measurement data. The LC-SLM's experimental demonstration finally verifies the resultant improvement in holographic imaging. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America