An efficient dynamic control method of light

polarization using single phase-only liquid-crystal-on-

silicon spatial light modulators (LCOS SLMs) for optical
data storage
JINTAO HONG,1 JIN LI,1 DAPING CHU1,*
1Centrefor Photonic Devices and Sensors, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FA, United Kingdom
*Corresponding author: dpc31@[Link]
Received XX Month XXXX; revised XX Month, XXXX; accepted XX Month XXXX; posted XX Month XXXX (Doc. ID XXXXX); published XX Month XXXX

The technology of five-dimensional (5D) optical data storage in transparent materials paves a promising way to
unlimited lifetime data storage for future cloud. Phase-only liquid-crystal-on-silicon spatial light modulator (LCOS
SLM) has already exhibited its potential for this application in tailoring ultrafast laser writing beams for 5D optical
data storage. A phase-only LCOS SLM can generate arbitrary data patterns by using diffractive holographic imaging
for the data writing light beam generation. However, the polarization control of the output holographic image is
still achieved by using an external polarization modulator, which leads to complications, bulkiness, and large
delays in current methods. In this paper, we presented an efficient phase and polarization modulation method
through a compact system based on a single phase-only LCOS SLM to simultaneously control both the holographic
image and its polarization state. The proposed method utilizes two-polarization-components coding in conjunction
with a polarization components rotation technique in a compact system. Using this polarization rotation technique,
two light components can be independently coded by separately using two holograms on two halves of LCOS SLM.
We experimentally construct a proof-of-concept prototype of the compact system, and the effectiveness of the
system has been experimentally verified. © 2018 Optical Society of America
[Link]

1. INTRODUCTION Currently, several works regarding polarization modulations for laser

writing beam generations have been reported. Allegre et al. utilized
Phase-only liquid-crystal-on-silicon spatial light modulator (LCOS
two phase-only SLM in conjunction with a pair of waveplates to control
SLM) is becoming an important tool for laser processing in a range of
the wavefront and polarization of a laser beam [14,15]. In this method,
systems [1-4]. And it has already demonstrated its potential for this
two SLMs are regarded as an “SLM convert”. The first SLM is utilized to
application in tailoring ultrafast laser writing beams for optical data
structure the beam wavefront through a phase pattern. When light
storage. A recent breakthrough has made it possible to high-capacity
passing a half-wave plate attached to the first SLMs, the horizontal
optical store data in fused silica [5-7]. The technology of 5D optical data
polarization is tiled to +45°. The second SLM combined with a quarter-
storage in transparent materials paves a promising way to unlimited
waveplate is utilized to convert incident linear polarization into a
lifetime data storage for future cloud [8-13]. In the optical data writing
desired state of polarization. In this method, the modulation
process, to encode information to the nanograting structure created by
implementation is achieved by the second SLM and waveplate.
laser pulses, a light field of target data pattern (multi-beam arrays)
However, the polarization state modulation is limited because two
with target linear polarization state is required. Phase-only LCOS SLM
components of a vector beam cannot be arbitrarily accessible. Allegre
can generate arbitrary data patterns by using diffractive holographic
et al. also developed another polarization beam generation method
imaging, which is specifically suitable for the data writing beam
using a single SLM and a λ/4 wave-plate [16]. A phase-only liquid-
generation. But the polarization control of the output image is still
crystal SLM was used to convert a linearly polarized femtosecond-
achieved by using an external polarization modulator. This leads to
pulse laser beam to radially or azimuthally polarized vortex beams. In
complications, bulkiness, and large delays in current methods.
[17], Lam et al. developed a generation method of continuously
Therefore, it is important to develop an efficient phase and polarization
rotating polarization by combing cross-polarizations. The beam
modulation method only using phase-only LCOS SLMs to
modulator is composed of an SLM and a quarter-wave plate. A
simultaneously control both the holographic image and its polarization
transmissive SLM in connection with a quarter-wave plate can
state.
produce orthogonal linear polarization on two sides of the laser beam. the difficulty in the synchronization of voxel pattern generation and the
Although these methods can generate some polarization states on the external rotatable HWP.
two sides of the laser beam in the femtosecond laser beam writing
The current existing methods usually were developed for the
process, the dynamic simultaneous generation of the arbitrary linear
generation of spatially verified polarization distribution, for example,
polarization states and holographic patterns still cannot be achieved.
vortex polarization light field for optical tweezers. However, in the
In [18], Hasegawa et al. utilized a pair of SLMs to create a holographic application of optical data storage in glass, each voxel writing only
vector wave femtosecond laser processing system. The pulse was requires one uniform linear polarization state of light. This means that
radiated onto the first SLM (SLM1), which displayed CGH1 for applying the required writing light field could usually be a discrete dot array and
a pure phase delay to the p-component, that is, phase modulation. The each dot with its own linear polarization state instead of an integral
HWP was arranged with an azimuthal angle of π/8 to rotate the linear beam in previous polarization modulation applications. Therefore, a
polarization by π/4. The pulse was also radiated onto the second SLM novel linearly polarized light controlling method is needed for voxel
(SLM2), which displayed CGH2 for applying a phase delay between the writing.
p- and s-components, that is polarization modulation. SLM2 was
To address this issue, we proposed an efficient phase and polarization
located at the image plane of SLM1. The circular or elliptical
modulation method based on a single phase-only LCOS SLM to
polarization reflected from SLM2 was converted to linear polarization
simultaneously control both the holographic image and its polarization
using a QWP set to an azimuthal angle of π/4. In [19], Ono et al.
state. In [27], we considered the zero-order noise issue caused by the
demonstrated a vector hologram beam generation method using two
pixelated structure of LCOS devices to achieve the feasibility and
radially polarized beams that works as inhomogeneous polarized light.
flexibility of a compact system for the phase and polarization
A two-wave mixing technique using radially or linearly polarized input
modulation of light. In this paper, we demonstrated the detailed
light from two laser sources is adopted. The polarization distribution in
methods of a compact system for the phase and polarization
the cross-section of the two writing beams was controlled by an SLM.
modulation using based on a single LCOS SLM. The compact system is
The University of Southampton developed an improved method using designed by a folded dynamic polarization-modulation system using
a rotation-free half-wave plate matrix (HPM) to achieve polarization LCOS-SLM. The new method uses two cascade-connected holograms
modulation [6, 20-23]. This method used an LCOS SLM to implement presented single LCOS-SLM in conjunction with a half-wave plate to
data pattern generation and a HPM to alter the writing beam’s create the modulation of multiple linear polarization states and
polarization state. The HPM consists of an array of half wave-plates is simultaneously allowing the implementation of the holographic image
used to produce the designed polarization states, which was fabricated generation.
by a laser to imprint a half-wave matrix consisting of four segments
In this work, we aim to control arbitrary linear polarization states and
with predefined fast axis directions. In [24], similar work is done where
simultaneously allow the implementation of the holographic image
a waveplate array is fabricated with a femtosecond laser inside silica
generation. This is to meet the application requirements of optical data
glass. In this method, the fixed HMP can provide desired polarization
storage in glass and it is different fundamentally from what the existing
states for data patterns when the glass sample is moved to the correct
methods do, which is mainly aiming on the control of polarization
spatial position. The mechanical movement for polarization
distribution of a light spot (fixed shape and pattern), not the
modulation is transferred from the half-wave plate to the substrate of
polarization control on dynamic holographic images..
glass. This change brings the delay to the hundreds ms range; however,
the mechanical delay of glass block movement still prevents the
recording speed of data from reaching the current Blu-ray disc 2. THE PROPOSED METHOD
recording speed. The delay caused by glass movement is considerably
A. The principle
large when we compare this to the refresh rate of data pattern
generation and time duration of laser exposure. Another limitation of The proposed method adopts a concept of independent coding two
this method is the number of available polarization states for writing. orthogonal light components. This means that the target image and
This method can only provide four fixed polarization states for the amplitude information are firstly independently encoded on horizontal
information encoding due to the design of HMP. This means a and vertical light components. Then, the target image reconstruction
significant limitation in storage density. Although the number of half- and output polarization formation are simultaneously completed by
wave plates on the HMP can be increased, it will lead to more spatial using the focusing lens to perform the Fourier transform. However, to
movement of glass substrate due to the working principle of this use a single LCOS SLM in this method, a different modulation scheme
method. of two polarization components is needed due to the single working
direction of liquid crystal molecules.
In voxel writing, only linearly polarized light is used to generate the
writing beam, thus, a rotatable half-wave plate (HWP) is a direct way to The schematic of the proposed compact system of phase and
change the angle of a linearly polarized light. However, utilizing a polarization modulation method using a single LCOS SLM is shown in
rotatable HWP in voxel writing beam generation has a challenging Figure 1. In this method, a rotation scheme of the polarization plane of
problem: the significant decrease in writing speed due to the rotation two light components is proposed. The active area of LCOS SLM is
of HWP. In this method, the dot pattern for voxel writing with linear divided into two sections to load two CGHs. the X-direction component
polarization state is generated using an SLM, the light field then passes of the 45° polarized input beam is firstly coded by CGH1. Then, the
through an HWP for polarization angle modulation. Every time a new rotation of both polarization components makes the Y component
linear polarization angle is to be written, the HWP needs to be rotated available for coding by CGH2. After two coding processes, the output
to a certain angle to change the incident beam polarization state. The target image with target polarization can be obtained. Moreover, the
mechanical rotation process will cause a delay (usually in the order of compact system design based on this modulation method is proposed
seconds) [25-26]. This delay is significantly large when it comes to a in this work.
recording speed of a data storage technology. Moreover, the whole In this proposed method, after the X component of the light is encoded,
writing beam generation system will become complicated because of a half-wave plate is utilized to implement the rotation of both X and Y
polarization components. The half-wave plate can introduce a fixed π
phase shift between the two perpendicular polarization components form of phase distribution, and the phase distribution is directly
(X and Y) of the input light wave, therefore altering its polarization controlled by the CGHs on LCOS SLM.
direction. As shown in Figure 2, when the incident light has a linear
The dynamic control principle of light polarization of the proposed
polarization, the angle of the polarization direction of the input light
method is shown in Figure 3. Firstly, the linearly polarized input beam
can be shifted by the half-wave plate. And the change of polarization
is set at 45° to the LCOS SLM with working direction at Y-axis (the
direction is determined by the relative angle between the input light
horizontal direction). Then, the normalized Jones vector of the input
wave and optic axis of the half-wave plate. For example, when the
light can be expressed as
linear polarization direction of the input light wave is vertical and the
fast axis of the half-wave plate is at 45°, the polarization direction of the 1
E= (1)
output beam can change into horizontal. This behaviour of a half-wave 1
plate can be utilized in the proposed method. To encode target image where the amplitudes of two orthogonal vector components Ex and Ey
information and amplitude information on the two orthogonal are the same. Then, the input light beam incidents on the first half of
polarization components of the input light wave, the polarization the active area of LCOS SLM for the first modulation. In this modulation
direction of input light is set at 45°. Due to the use of a single LCOS SLM process, as shown in the schematic diagram in Figure 1, we use CGH1
device in the proposed method, the working direction of liquid crystal with the certain phase depth information to successfully encode both
is single: either horizontal or vertical. Therefore, the rotation of two target image information and amplitude information into the
linear polarization components based on a half-wave plate is the key to horizontal vector beam component (Ex). As the working direction of
the success of information coding using one LCOS SLM. the LCOS SLM is horizontal, the loaded CGH1 can only modulate the
horizontal component (Ex) of the input vector beam. The vertical
component (Ey) is not affected.
Here, we use G x to indicate the target image information for the X-
direction light component. The G x can be expressed as phase
distribution on CGH1 by G x = e . And the amplitude information
A is encoded via the phase depth of the CGH1. Then, the Jones vector
of optical vector beam after the first modulation can be expressed as

E= A ∙e (2)
1
Due to the polarization sensitivity of phase-only LCOS, the Y direction
component (the light wave in blue) remains unchanged and there is no
phase information (target image and phase depth) has been encoded
on it. After the phase-only modulation of the X-direction component
(the light wave in yellow) of the input light wave, the target image will
be reconstructed through the diffraction of light at an infinite distance.
Figure 1. Schematic of the proposed compact system of phase and
polarization modulation method using single LCOS SLM. This is due to the use of Fourier CGH. To reconstruct the target image, a
converging lens is utilized to perform a Fourier transform so that the
diffraction can occur on the focal plane of a lens. This means that the X-
direction component of input light will maintain the superposition
state with the Y-direction component after the first modulation
process when there is no lens applied. This is the key to polarization
components rotation in the proposed method.
Physically, the light wave at the X direction after phase-only
modulation on LCOS SLM has become the diffracted light beam, while
the light wave at the Y direction has not been affected. Due to the
property of far-field diffraction in the Fourier hologram, the image and
amplitude information of the light field at the X-direction are stored in
the form of the phase. This means that except for the phase value of the
X-direction components of each pixel on the light beam area, the other
property of the light waves at the X-direction will remain unchanged.
Now, we can consider the X direction light component as a diffracted
Figure 2. Principle of wave-plate used for the proposed phase and beam with a diffraction angle 0° to its original propagating direction
polarization modulation method based on a single LCOS SLM. The
and state. Therefore, the X-direction component of light maintains the
yellow light wave is the modulated polarization component, while the
blue one means the unaffected one after modulation by LCOS SLM. superposition state with the Y-direction component; meanwhile, they
are separated into two beams in the viewpoint of wave optics. In
B. Dynamic control of light polarization physical optics, they are still two orthogonal polarization components
of one single beam but with different phase values.
By using the polarization sensitivity [28-29] of LCOS-based phase-only
modulation, the independent encoding of the holographic image and Because we can treat the X and Y direction of light components as two
amplitude information onto the X and Y components of a single input independent light waves, the half-wave plate can be introduced to
beam can be achieved. Before the Fourier transform of the independently and simultaneously rotation the direction of these two
information-encoded beam, both target image information and polarization components. Now, we can separately write the Jones
amplitude information are not expressed. And both are stored in the vector of X and Y direction of polarization components as
 0 modulated light component here has also become a far-field diffracted
E = A ∙e E = (3)
0 1 light. This means that it will remain the superposition state with E .
Because of the use of a single LCOS SLM, as shown in Figure 3, only the Therefore, the superposition of two polarization components is not
horizontal polarization components can be modulated. Therefore, the affected by the two separate phase modulations and polarization
Y direction components (the light wave in blue) need to be rotated into components rotation. Therefore, the final output light field can be
a horizontal polarization component before the second modulation. expressed as the direct superposition of two light components
And CGH2 will be loaded on the second half of the active area of LCOS 0 A ∙e A ∙e
SLM to code the rotated Y direction polarization component. E =E +E = + = (8)
A ∙e 0 A ∙e
Moreover, to prevent the phase information on X direction polarization
components (the light in yellow) will not be affected in the second To simultaneously manipulating the polarization state of output light
modulation process, we must rotate it into a vertical direction in with a certain target image, we set the target information on both
advance. Hence, the half-wave plate with the fast axis at 45° is placed in CGH1 and CGH2 the same as
front of the second half LCOS SLM. By doing this, the target rotation of
G y =e = G x =e =e (9)
two polarization components can be simultaneously achieved before
the second phase modulation. The Jones matrix of a half-wave plate Then, the Jones vector of output light will be rewritten as
with the fast axis at 45° can be expressed as A
0 1 E = ∙e (10)
HWP = (4) A
1 0
Now, the phase (target image e ) and polarization (amplitude ratio of
Then, the Jones vector of X and Y direction polarization components A and A ) modulation of light has been achieved in the proposed
after traveling through the half-wave plate can be written as
method.
0 1 A ∙e 0
E = HWP ∙ E = ∙ = (5)
1 0 0 A ∙e 3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
0 1 0 1
E = HWP ∙ E = ∙ = (6) A. Proof-of-concept compact system
1 0 1 0
Now, we can see that the previous two polarization components have Figure 4 shows the experimental schematic of the proof-of-concept
exchanged their polarization direction after the half-wave plate. The compact system of the proposed phase and polarization modulation
E is now at the vertical direction, while the E is changed into the method using a single LCOS SLM. The expanded and collimated laser
beam passing through a linear polarizer is used as a light source. The
horizontal direction and ready for information encoding. It is
fast axis of the linear polarizer is set at 45° to the working direction (0°)
important to notice that the rotation of polarization direction of two
of the LCOS device. Then, the linearly polarized beam, passing through
light components using a half-wave plate will not change their physical
a non-polarizing beam splitter (NPBS), will illuminate the left-half of
superposition relationship.
the active area of the SLM. The hologram uploaded on the SLM
performs modulation to the horizontally polarized light, while the
vertically polarized light is not affected and then be reflected into the
HWP. When passing through the HWP, the horizontally polarized light
component is now rotated into a vertically polarized light component
and then be perpendicular to the working direction of the LCOS device.
Accordingly, the previously vertically polarized light component is then
rotated into a horizontally polarized light component that is ready for
modulation. Two mirrors here are used to redirect the light to the
right-half of SLM for the second modulation. The second modulation
will only affect the light component that is not modulated at the first
modulation. After two independent modulations on each of the
orthogonal light components, both horizontal and vertical components
of the output light field now carry the same diffraction image. Then, the
two beams with orthogonal polarization states (0° and 90°) will be
Figure 3. Principle of the proposed phase and polarization modulation combined into a final polarization state.
method using single LCOS SLM. The yellow light wave is the modulated In the concept-of-proof compact system, the LCOS SLM, a linear
polarization component, while the blue one means the unaffected one
after modulation by LCOS SLM.
polarizer, mirrors, a half-wave plate, beam splitters, and a polarization
beam combiner are integrated into a compact structure shown in
Then, we use G y to indicate the target image information for E . Figure 5. The LCOS SLM is fabricated by in-house developed dye-level
assembly techniques. The resolution of the LCOS device used in the
G y = e . And the amplitude information A is encoded via phase
experiment is 1920×1080. Two beam splitters (BS004) are used,
depth of the CGH2. So, the E after second phase modulation can be which are the non-polarizing beam splitter cube with an energy split
expressed as ratio at 50:50. Two mirrors (BBSQ05-E02) with 0.5-inch ×0.5-inch is a
A ∙e broadband dielectric mirror with a working wavelength of 400-750
E = (7) nm. A polymer zero-order half-wave plate (WPH05ME) with a
0
diameter of 0.5 inches is used to rotate the polarization angles of two
Here, we can see that both two orthogonal polarization components separated light components. A linear polarizer (LPVISC050) with a
have been encoded with the target image information and amplitude diameter of 12.5 mm is used to create the input light with linear
information. Like the situation in the first modulation for E , the polarization at 45° for the system.
 the compact system has been selected from five experimental versions.
The optical path alignment has been tested before and after the
assembly of the LCOS SLM so that the two incidences on the LCOS
surface have been calibrated to be perpendicular. The angle input
linear polarizer has been also calibrated to ensure that the input
polarization has 45° to the working direction of LCOS SLM. Also, the
angle of the half-wave plate is calibrated to ensure that two
polarization components have been rotated 90° after passing through
the wave plate.

Figure 4. Schematic of the 3D optical configuration of the proposed

polarization modulation system where a linear polarizer (LP), mirrors
(M1 and M2), a half-wave plate (HWP), beam splitters (BS1 and BS2),
and a polarization beam combiner (PBC) are used.

Figure 6. Schematic of the optical path of the compact system.

Figure 5. 3D structure of the compact system from design software Figure 7. Prototype of the proposed compact system. All optical
[Link] optical elements and LCOS SLM are also shown in the elements and LCOS SLM has been assembled, and the half of structure is
system. The pink and green cubes represent the two non-polarizing removed to show the inside of the optical system.
beam splitters. The red cylinder is the half-wave plate, and the two
cream cuboids are the mirrors. B. Results and Discussion
In this part, the experiment results of phase and polarization
The working principle of the compact system is shown in Figure 6. The
modulation using the compact system have been shown. Due to the
input beam enters the system from the pink beam splitter, and the
use of a single LCOS, two CGHs with the same target image information
output beam exists from the green beam splitter. Due to the LCOS SLM
and different amplitude information (according to the target
is in reflective mode, the incident beam is designed to be normal to the
polarization) have been independently calculated and put spliced to
LCOS surface and be bounced back to the coming direction. The LCOS
form one joint CGH. Each of the sub-CGHs takes half of the active area
SLM is split into two independent halves by loading two independently
of LCOS SLM. Here, two experiment results are shown in Figure 8 and
calculated CGHs. To avoid the input beam transmissive propagation
Figure 9. The desired polarization images can be obtained by
through the beam splitter, an extra beam blocking film will be placed
controlling holograms. These results indicated that the compact
between two beam splitters.
system can achieve the same performance in simultaneous phase and
The structure of the compact system is designed using software polarization modulation as the method of single beam coding. To
3Dmax and be fabricated by high precision 3D print (Ultimaker S5). provide high-quality experimental results, the adjustment in optical
Figure 7 shows the final compact system integrated with LCOS SLM elements position in the compact system is required. To acquire high
and optical components using the self-fabrication structure. The accuracy polarization modulation, the calibration of half-wave plate
fabrication error is around 0.1mm after each making. To ensure the angle to the LCOS SLM working direction is also needed.
high precision assembly of every optical element, the final version of
We also performed the comparison with the phase and polarization optical data storage, when we consider the number of data bits that
control system using two LOCS SLMs. The phase and polarization one voxel can carry, we can start from the number of available coding
modulation method proposed in the two-LOCS-SLMs-based system is states (the combination of polarization states and retardance levels)
based on the principle of the single beam coding method introduced in for a voxel. Figure 10 shows an example of each voxel carrying 3 bits of
this work. Thus, these two methods have similarities in many aspects. data. The retardence level is normally controlled by the pulse length
The major difference between the two methods comes from the new and times of the laser, and the polarization state of voxel is directed
design of polarization components rotation in the compact system. determined by the polarization state of the writing light field. To
Table 1 demonstrated the comparison of the two methods. The simultaneously control the data image pattern and its polarization
principle of phase and polarization modulation in both the compact state is the aim of our work.
system and the single beam coding system is the same. In both
methods, the object of phase-only modulation on LCOS SLMs is the two
orthogonal polarization components of one single input beam. The
holographic target image information and the polarization
components amplitude information are simultaneously encoded by
computer-generated holograms. The target image information is
calculated by the GS algorithm, and the polarization components
amplitude information is controlled by using different phase depths of
holograms to manipulate the first-order diffraction efficiency.
Therefore, like the single beam coding method, the proposed compact
system can also provide a glass-motion-free data writing function in
optical data storage in a glass substrate. Moreover, the output target
image and target polarization can be reconfigurable and dynamically
altered at the speed of the refresh rate of LCOS SLMs.
The fundamental difference between the compact system and the
single beam coding method is the use of two polarization components.
Table 2 shows the SLM utilization comparison of different methods. In
the method of single beam coding, two orthogonal polarization
components are independently and sequentially modulated by two
orthogonally placed LCOS SLMs. The working direction of two LCOS
SLMs is aligned to their corresponding polarization component,
respectively. This is because the directions of two polarization
components of the input beam are left unchanged in this method.
However, in the compact system, only one LCOS SLM is used so that
there is only one working direction (either horizontal or vertical) for
Figure 8. Images of output light field with target image (solid triangle)
information encoding. Therefore, in the compact system, the
and target polarization state (45°).
independent rotation of two polarization components’ direction is
introduced to adapt the single liquid crystal molecule direction. This
optical rotation can effectively exchange the direction of two
polarization components for sequential information encoding, and the
rotation does not affect the coded holographic target image
information and amplitude information on polarization components.
Due to the use of a single LCOS SLM in the compact system, the cost of
the writing beam generation system is largely reduced. This is because
the LCOS SLMs device (liquid crystal cell and driving system) takes up
the most hardware cost apart from the femtosecond laser system in
data writing. More importantly, the compact system method can also
be largely simplified polarization direction calibration. Because the
input light needs to be 45° to the working direction of LCOS SLM, a
precise polarization direction calibration is required. When only one
LCOS SLM and one input beam are used, the direction calibration only
needs to be conducted between one input beam and one LCOS SLM.
However, in the previous method of the single beam coding, when two
LCOS SLMs and one input beam are used, the input beam needs to be
at 45° for both LCOS devices at the same time. Therefore, the
calibration process becomes more complicated in this situation. In the
compact system, the maximum input beam size can be half of the
active area of LCOS SLM due to the use of a single LCOS device, thus, the
total light intensity for phase and polarization modulation is reduced
comparing with the single beam coding method
The proposed method has a potential application in the laser
processing to optical data storage in the future. Here, we demonstrated Figure 9. Images of output light field with target image (4x4 dot array)
how to use our vector beam laser processing for optical data storage. In and target polarization state (60°).
 Table 1. Comparison of single beam coding method and compact system

Phase Polarization Multi-polarization Output polarization states and

Methods Delay
modulation modulation states writing image

Sequential coding of SLM refresh rate

Single beam coding CGH Glass motion free Customizable
two components (60~100Hz)
system

Sequential coding of SLM refresh rate

Compact system CGH Glass motion free Customizable
two components (60~100Hz)

Table 2. SLM utilization comparison of single beam coding method and compact system

Input beam SLM utilization for

Methods Polarization components calibration
size polarization modulation

Single beam coding system SLM size Two SLMs Direction of two SLMs

Compact system Half SLM size Single SLM Direction of single SLM

The polarization angle of voxel is one of parameter used for encoding method requires no glass sample movement during the writing of each
data bits. Thus, a data page in the glass block consists of voxels with data page and no external polarization modulator. Therefore, apart
different polarization angles, and the voxels with a same polarization from the femtosecond laser and glass sample moving in depth, the
angle can have an arbitrary location distribution according to the writing speed can be increased by using the proposed method.
encoded data. Therefore, the writing beam of voxels needs to able to
produce a random multi-beam pattern, at the same time, the multi-
beams light field needs to have the target linear polarization state. As
shown in Figure 11, when one data page has four different polarization
states of voxels (0°,45°,90°,135°), four exposures of four different
writing beams (different target image and target polarization state) is
needed to finish a data page.
The existing writing methods are mostly sequential writing. Some
recent methods use phase-only LCOS SLM to generate data pattern,
however, they still need external polarization modulator to convert the
polarization state of holographic light field into the target. For
sequential writing, many times of glass sample movement for the
writing of one data page are needed. Due to the use of motor-driven
platform, the mechanical delays caused by acceleration and
deceleration processes take up a major part in the time duration of the
current writing process. For methods using external polarization
modulators, some still require sample stage movement, and the Figure 10. An example of data bits encoding and decoding as binary
polarization modulator also will introduce delays. The proposed code onto the single voxel.

Figure 11. Schematic of the writing process of a data page in optical data storage in a glass.
 [Link]
4. CONCLUSIONS 9. Gu, M., Li, X., & Cao, Y. (2014). Optical storage arrays: a
perspective for future big data storage. Light: Science &
In this paper, an efficient method for simultaneous phase and
Applications, 3(5), e177-e177.
polarization modulation has been proposed. To verify the effectiveness
10. Gu, M., Zhang, Q., & Lamon, S. (2016). Nanomaterials for
of the method, the proof-of-concept compact system has been
physically designed and fabricated by using high-precision 3D printing. optical data storage. Nature Reviews Materials, 1(12), 1-
The compact system of phase and polarization modulation can 14.
independently control the diffraction pattern of horizontal and vertical 11. Greengard, S. (2019). The future of data
polarization light components. When we utilize this system to generate storage. Communications of the ACM, 62(4), 12-12.
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Funding Information. UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Edwardson, S. P., & Dearden, G. (2013). Complete
Research Council (EPSRC) through the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral wavefront and polarization control for ultrashort-pulse
Training in Integrated Photonic and Electronic Systems laser microprocessing. Optics express, 21(18), 21198-
(EP/L015455/1). 21207.
15. Jin, Y., Allegre, O. J., Perrie, W., Abrams, K., Ouyang, J.,
Acknowledgement. We would like to thank the Holographic Lab of Fearon, E., ... & Dearden, G. (2013). Dynamic modulation
the CPDS for supporting this work of spatially structured polarization fields for real-time
Competing interests. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. control of ultrafast laser-material interactions. Optics
express, 21(21), 25333-25343.
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available from the corresponding author upon request. radially and azimuthally polarized femtosecond vortex
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