Rapid phase calibration and increased efficiency of a spatial light modulator using novel phase masks and an iterative algorithm

Abstract: We develop an improved phase calibration method of a reflective spatial light modulator (SLM) using interferometry by employing novel phase masks. We generate the optimised phase masks by using Iterative Fourier Transform Algorithm (IFTA) and demonstrate that they perform with 18$\%$ better efficiency over global linear corrections in the look-up table (LUT). In addition, we also implement global linear corrections in the LUT and correspondingly modify the phase encoding of blazed gratings to improve the efficiency of our phase-limited SLM. In the process, we definitively determine the actual maximum phase throw of our SLM which provides a recipe for users to verify supplier specifications.Besides obtaining array of 1D/2D spots having high uniformity (~90$\%$) using IFTA, our result exemplifies the use of iterative algorithms for improving efficiency of phase limited SLMs. Finally, our method enables threefold faster phase measurements, and to the best of our knowledge, is the first endeavour directed towards enabling rapid phase characterisation of an SLM using interferometric measurements and can have very useful applications in settings which often require faster phase calibrations.