The ability to control the direction and shape of multiple optical beams from a common aperture has potential use in a variety of applications, including free space optical communications, remote sensing and weapon guidance. For example, a laser radar beam can be fanned out to reduce scan time while searching for potential threats. Once a threat is detected, a pencil beam can be generated to locate and track the threat. With holographic beam control, a variety of beam shapes or multispot patterns can be generated on-the-fly to aid identification and tracking.1 If there are multiple threats within the field of regard of the dynamic aperture, then multiple beams can be generated to pinpoint and individually track the threats without time multiplexing or spatially segmenting the aperture.
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