Impact of aberrations in SLM-based far-field holography

TL;DR

This paper presents a camera-in-the-loop calibration method for phase-only SLMs in far-field holography, improving image quality by modeling aberrations and analyzing their effects on diffraction efficiency and speckle contrast.

Contribution

It introduces a precise calibration approach that models prominent aberrations, enhancing the accuracy and quality of holographic images in SLM-based setups.

Findings

High consistency between recorded and calculated intensity distributions.

Including aberration modeling improves image quality and diffraction efficiency.

Aberrations significantly influence speckle contrast in holograms.

Abstract

We use camera-in-the-loop calibration to calibrate a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) in a far-field hologram setup. The recorded intensity distributions achieve a high degree of consistency with the calculated results, indicating a precise calibration and sufficient modeling of the most prominent aberrations. In this work, we discuss the modeled aberrations and examine the improvement or loss in image quality and diffraction efficiency that is obtained by including or excluding the modeled aberrations in the calibration. We further show the influence of aberrations on speckle-reduced holograms and evaluate the speckle contrast.