Design, implementation and study of the high-resolution high-efficiency liquid crystal on Silicon spatial light modulator for the telecommunication application in the short wave infrared spectral band

摘要

There are many important applications for phase-only liquid crystal on Silicon-based spatial light modulators(LCOS SLMs). Among the applications, the diffractive beam splitting, beam shaping and beam steering withLCOS SLM are finding more and more use in telecommunication applications (e.g. wavelength selective switchfor ROADM, space and mode division multiplexing). However, many effects of LCOS device have to be consid-ered if we want to get high quality output light field. For example, the ideal phase, intensity and polarizationdistribution in far field are usually deteriorated by the pixelated metal structure and fringing field effects. Thus,the total efficiency is decreased. By using electro-optical and electromagnetic simulation methods, we can prop-erly incorporate the effects that inuence the optical performance of LCOS and optimize the design. Furthermorewe report the implementation of the high-performance high-resolution LCOS SLM for the telecommunicationC- and L-band with the average insertion loss (IL) of less than 0.2 dB, achieved by the reectivity-enhancementcoating on the LCOS backplane. The experimental results on reectivity, diffraction efficiency, crosstalk andother important parameters are compared with the theoretical predictions.