The Effect Of Read/Write Isolation On The Resolution Of The Marconi Spatial Light Modulator

Four spatial light modulators (SLM's) with varying efficiency light blocking layers are used to demonstrate the effect of optical isolation on the devices' performance. It is shown that incorporation of high attenuation blocking layers can improve most aspects of the SLM's behaviour, yielding a 300 fold increase in gain over the the device without a blocking layer, and also improve the device resolution to give a 50% MTF at 50 line pairs/mm. A non-ambiguous method of determining the devices sensitivity is also presented along with a simple formula relating the various intensity requirements for a particular application to the gain and light blocking requirements of the SLM.