Characterizing a liquid crystal spatial light modulator at oblique incidence angles using the self-interference method

The phase modulation characteristics of a reflective liquid crystal (LC) spatial light modulator (SLM) under oblique incidence are studied by using our proposed self-interference method. The experimental setup of the method is very simple and has good robustness to mechanical vibrations. By changing the gray value of the combined grayscale loaded on the LC-SLM, different sheared fringe patterns, generated by the interference between the constant phase-modulated beam and the +1-order diffracted beam of the blazed grating, can be obtained. The amount of phase modulation of the LC-SLM is obtained by subtracting the phase of the two side lobes in the frequency domain. By turning the turntable where the SLM is mounted, the phase modulation characteristics at different incident angles can be measured. The experimental results show that the phase modulation curves do not change significantly with the small angle. When the angle is large (i.e. larger than 10°), the phase modulation curves become different, especially for the high gray levels. With the increase of the incident angle, the phase modulation depth is reduced. The results indicate that the incident angle plays an important role in the performance of the phase modulation of an LC-SLM.