High Power Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulators

摘要

A scalable wavefront control approach based upon proven liquid crystal (LC) spatial light modulator (SLM) technology was extended for potential use in high-energy near-infrared laser applications. With use of an ultra-low absorption transparent conductor in the LC SLM and materials with better physical properties, the laser power handling capability of the device was improved. The experimental results are reported regarding a LC SLM functioning as a wavefront control device under illumination of a kilo-watt laser source. Compared to conventional deformable mirrors, this non-mechanical wavefront control approach offers substantial improvements in speed (bandwidth), resolution, power consumption and system weight/volume, and the zero-coupling between pixels enables a fast feed-forward wavefront correction scheme.