{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/fast-and-light-efficient-wavefront-shaping","title":"Fast and light-efficient wavefront shaping with a MEMS phase-only light modulator","arxiv_id":"2409.01289","date":"2024-09-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["José C. A. Rocha","Terry Wright","Unė G Būtaitė","Joel Carpenter","George S. D. Gordon","David B. Phillips"],"abstract":"Over the last two decades, spatial light modulators (SLMs) have revolutionised our ability to shape optical fields. They grant independent dynamic control over thousands of degrees-of-freedom within a single light beam. In this work we test a new type of SLM, known as a phase-only light modulator (PLM), that blends the high efficiency of liquid crystal SLMs with the fast switching rates of binary digital micro-mirror devices (DMDs). A PLM has a 2D mega-pixel array of micro-mirrors. The vertical height of each micro-mirror can be independently adjusted with 4-bit precision. Here we provide a concise tutorial on the operation and calibration of a PLM. We demonstrate arbitrary pattern projection, aberration correction, and control of light transport through complex media. We show high-speed wavefront shaping through a multimode optical fibre -- scanning over 2000 points at 1.44 kHz. We make available our custom high-speed PLM control software library developed in C++. As PLMs are based upon micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology, they are polarisation agnostic, and possess fundamental switching rate limitations equivalent to that of DMDs -- with operation at up to 10 kHz anticipated in the near future. We expect PLMs will find high-speed light shaping applications across a range of fields including adaptive optics, microscopy, optogenetics and quantum optics.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01289v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.01289v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"fast-and-light-efficient-wavefront-shaping","repo_url":"https://github.com/structuredlightlab/plmctrl","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}