Steering accuracy of a spatial light modulator-based single beam steerer: guidelines and limitations

Paper in proceeding, 2008

The positioning accuracy when a phase-only one dimensional spatial light modulator (SLM) is used for beam steering is limited by the number of pixels and their quantized phase modulation. Optimizing the setting of the SLM pixels individually can lead to the inaccuracy being a significant fraction of the diffraction limited spot size. This anomalous behaviour was simulated numerically, and experiments showed the same phenomena with very good agreement. However, by including an extra degree of freedom in the optimization of the SLM setting, we show that the accuracy can be improved by a factor proportional to the number of pixels in the SLM.