the shape of the modulating device. The flat output phase makes it
suitable for illuminating phase-only spatial light modulators. We
have shown the ability to create trapping spots or diffractive light
patterns that are about 3 times more intense than using the traditional approach of hard-truncation. Alternatively, this means we
only need 1/3 of the laser power to create similar intensity-level
patterns to the hard-truncated case or 3 times more trapping spots
or diffractive pattern fill factor.
The above conclusion can be appreciated better when one
considers a scenario where a given laser source is already operating at its maximum output and yet still not sufficient to perform,
for example, a holographic multi-beam trapping experiment of
colloidal particles. The use of the GPC LS prior to holographic
encoding is able to “squeeze out” 3 times more photons compared
to the simple hard truncation. This gain in photons might just
allow an experimentalist to carry out this trapping experiment
with the given maximum power at hand. This scenario can be
extended to application cases that aim to parallelize processes
based on focused light by producing multiple foci.
The method presented here can be advantageous for a host of
photonic applications such as multiple optical tweezers, multi-site
photolysis in neurophotonics and parallel two-photon polymerization. Moreover, multiple plane beam shaping techniques
can benefit from this enhanced read-out since the static beam
shaping using the GPC LS is independent of the reconfigurable SLM
phase encoding. Due to the versatility of the input phase masks for
the GPC LS, the system is not limited to just simple rectangular or
circular apertures of basic light modulating elements. For example,