Nonlinear response studies and corrections for a liquid crystal spatial light modulator

Abstract

The nonlinear response of light transmission

characteristics of a liquid crystal (LC) spatial light modulator

(SLM) is studied. The results show that the device exhibits a wide

range of variations with different control parameters and input

settings. Experiments were performed to obtain intensity modulation

that is best described by either power-law or sigmoidal functions.

Based on the inverse transformation, an appropriate pre-processing

scheme for electrically addressed input gray-scale images,

particularly important in several optical processing and imaging

applications, is suggested. Further, the necessity to compensate the

SLM image nonlinearities in a volume holographic data storage and

retrieval system is demonstrated.