Reducing the effect of pixel crosstalk in phase only spatial light modulators.

A method for compensating for pixel crosstalk in liquid crystal based spatial light modulators is presented. By modifying a commonly used hologram generating algorithm to account for pixel crosstalk, the intensity errors in obtained diffraction spot intensities are significantly reduced. We also introduce a novel method for characterizing the pixel crosstalk in phase-only spatial light modulators, providing input for the hologram generating algorithm. The methods are experimentally evaluated and an improvement of the spot uniformity by more than 100% is demonstrated for an SLM with large pixel crosstalk.