Design and alignment strategies of 4f systems

used in the vectorial optical field generator

Wei Han,* Wen Cheng, and Qiwen Zhan

Electro-Optics Program, University of Dayton, 300 College Park, Dayton, Ohio 45469, USA
*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Received 6 October 2014; accepted 6 February 2015;

posted 9 February 2015 (Doc. ID 224395); published 13 March 2015

In this paper, the design and alignment strategies of 4f systems used in the vectorial optical field
generator are described in detail. Reflection-type 4f systems were adopted due to limited spacing.
Alignment patterns are designed and introduced as alignment tools so that the optical property (degree
of freedom) controlled by each specific spatial light modulator section can be visualized and alignment of
the 4f systems can be performed using the CCD image sharpness as the metric. In particular, blurring
due to diffraction effects is minimized when the 4f system is fully aligned. © 2015 Optical Society of
America
OCIS codes: (260.1960) Diffraction theory; (260.5430) Polarization; (230.6120) Spatial light
modulators.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/AO.54.002275

1. Introduction various imaging systems for accurate reconstruction

The 4f system is a commonly used optical relay that of the optical field [1–4] and Fourier plane filter-
usually consists of two positive lenses with the input ing [5,6].
plane located one focal length (f 1 ) in front of Lens 1
and the output plane located one focal length (f 2 ) 2. Implementation of 4f Systems in a Vectorial Optical
after Lens 2. The magnification is found to be equal Field Generator
to −f 2 ∕f 1 . In particular, a one-to-one relay (−1 mag-
nification) can be achieved if the two lenses have the In one of our previous works [7], a vectorial optical
same focal length (f 1
f 2 ). Mathematically, the 4f field generator (VOF-Gen) capable of creating arbi-
system can be understood as a cascade of two Fourier trarily complex beam cross section was designed,
transforms using two identical Fourier lenses: built, and tested. Based on two reflective phase-only
liquid crystal spatial light modulators (SLMs), this
generator is capable of controlling the spatial distri-
F fF fgx; ygg
g−x; −y:
butions of all the parameters of an optical field,
including the phase, amplitude, and polarization
In a well aligned, one-to-one 4f relay system, as
(ellipticity and orientation), on a pixel-by-pixel basis.
shown in Fig. 1, the output field is an inverted replica
In order to fully control these degrees of freedom in
of the input, as shown in the previous equation,
generating any vectorial optical field, four SLM
thus eliminating any extra phase terms and mini-
sections that can be independently operated are
mizing diffraction effects. High-fidelity optical field
required. As shown in Fig. 2, two phase-only SLMs
reconstruction can be achieved between the object
(HOLOEYE 1080P) are used in the VOF-Gen system,
and image planes. 4f systems are widely used in
and each of them is divided into two sections to take
advantage of the SLM’s large format and high reso-
1559-128X/15/092275-04$15.00/0 lution (HDTV, 1920 × 1080, pixel size 8 μm), where
© 2015 Optical Society of America each of the SLM sections is responsible for the spatial

20 March 2015 / Vol. 54, No. 9 / APPLIED OPTICS 2275

 two beam splitters to avoid cross talk due to direct
propagation. A 2 in. (50 mm) diameter lens with
200 mm focal length is used to focus the beam,
and a mirror is used to reflect the focused beam so
that it will be recollimated by the same lens. In Fig. 2,
the reflection-type lens/mirror 4f relay systems are
shown as L1/M1 and L4/M2 for Section 1 to 2 and
Section 3 to 4 relay, respectively. To relay the field
to the adjacent SLM section in the same SLM, a
small displacement is intentionally introduced
between the beam and optic axis of the lens so that
Fig. 1. One-to-one 4f optical relay system.
a spatial separation is present between the forward
and backward propagating beams. The displacement
modulation of the optical field in phase, amplitude, needs to be aligned to center the reflected beam on
polarization rotation, and retardation, respectively. the corresponding SLM section. A large-aperture
In order to minimize the diffraction effects and lens with a longer focal length ensures that the aber-
preserve the high-frequency components in the ration due to the decenter is kept minimal. Spatial
generated optical field, 4f systems are introduced filters SF1 and SF2 are placed at the Fourier plane
to relay the optical field from one SLM section to and can be used for filtering out the high-spatial-
the next. To ensure the sharpness of the optical field, frequency term.
longitudinal alignment needs to be performed to sat-
isfy the 4f condition. Meanwhile, different SLM sec- 3. Alignment Procedures of 4f Systems
tions need to be laterally registered for pixel-by-pixel
generation of the optical field. As a result, transverse A. Longitudinal Alignment
alignment of the 4f system is also required. The longitudinal alignment of the 4f system involves
Two different types of 4f system are adopted in the longitudinal translation along the optical axis for the
VOF-Gen design. Conventional 4f systems with two lens pairs in the conventional 4f system and the lens
positive lenses (L) are used to relay the field from and mirror in the reflection-type 4f system. The
Section 2 to Section 3 and from Section 4 to the longitudinal alignment is realized in the following
CCD camera, consisting of L2/L3 and L5/L6, respec- two steps.
tively. To relay the optical field from Section 1 to Due to the fact that the input beam is collimated in
Section 2 and from Section 3 to Section 4, a reflec- our system, a shearing interferometer was used as a
tion-type lens/mirror 4f relay system was adopted, collimation checker to align the 2f distance between
due to the proximity of the two SLM sections within the two lenses, as illustrated in Fig. 1. In our VOF-
one SLM panel (15.36 mm × 8.64 mm). Two 50/50 Gen system, this alignment step will determine the
polarization beam splitters are used to direct the spacing between L2 and L3, L5 and L6 for the con-
beam propagation, shown by the blue arrows in ventional 4f systems and the spacing between L1
Fig. 2. An opaque blocker is placed between the and M1, L4 and M2 for the reflection-type 4f sys-
tems. Once the largest interference fringes off the
shearing interferometer can be observed, the output
beam is well collimated and the 2f distance can be
precisely determined.
In order to align the rest of the 4f imaging systems,
namely the f distance before the first lens and f dis-
tance after the second, a pattern with fine features
was designed based on the concept of high-fidelity
optical field reconstruction. The CCD camera was
used to observe the pattern as a figure of merit for
the alignment. Different optical fields were gener-
ated according to the functionality realized by the
specific SLM section.
In our experiment, an alignment pattern of three
pairs of horizontal and vertical crossing lines is gen-
erated with binary amplitude or orthogonal polariza-
tions. The width of each line and spacing is designed
to be 100 μm, shown in Fig. 3. This pattern is used in
creating different optical fields with different degrees
of freedom for the longitudinal alignment of the 4f
system. Specifically, for the amplitude alignment step
(SLM Section 2), the alignment pattern is designed
Fig. 2. 4f systems used in the VOF-Gen system. with 100% transmission in the blue area and 0% in

2276 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 54, No. 9 / 20 March 2015

 Fig. 5. Four-quadrant pattern for the transverse alignment.
Fig. 3. Alignment pattern with fine features for 4f system align-
ment. Each line is 100 μm wide. pattern with a π phase difference in the blue area
can be used. Due to the undefined phase at the
the white area. Similarly, to align the polarization pattern boundary, it will appear as a dark line in the
rotation (SLM Section 3) and retardation (SLM camera. This can be used as the longitudinal feed-
Section 4), alignment patterns are designed so that back for the 4f system between Sections 1 and 2.
the blue/white areas are 45°/135° linearly polarized B. Transverse Alignment
and right-hand circularly polarized (RCP)/left-hand
circularly polarized (LCP), respectively. To align the 4f systems in the transverse (x, y) direc-
The longitudinal alignment is performed in a se- tion, four-quadrant alignment patterns (Fig. 5) with
quential manner, as shown by the flow chart in Fig. 4. binary amplitude or orthogonal polarizations were in-
The first 4f system to be aligned is the one between troduced. Similar to the longitudinal alignment strat-
the CCD and SLM Section 4, consisting of L5 and L6, egy, the x and y translations of the lenses in the 4f
where the retardation modulation is achieved. The systems are adjusted so that the centers of the four-
RCP/LCP alignment pattern illustrated in Fig. 3 is quadrant CCD images overlay the center of the input
loaded onto the VOF-Gen system. A circular polar- Gaussian beam for realizing different functionalities.
izer is placed in front of the CCD camera, and only Further transverse alignment of the 4f systems
the blue pattern with RCP can be detected. The involves overlaying the patterns in different SLM
longitudinal distances in the 4f system are aligned sections. This is achieved by displaying this four-
by adjusting the micrometer on the translational quadrant pattern for all SLM sections simultane-
stages so that the sharpness of the CCD image is ously. Due to the abrupt phase change in the SLM
maximized. At this point the first 4f relay system phase pattern, the boundary can be observed in the
is fully aligned in the longitudinal direction. Then CCD camera. Fine alignment of the 4f systems can
the alignment needs to be performed for each of be performed so that the “cross” patterns are overlaid.
the following 4f relay systems in a similar way.
4. Results and Discussion
The blue area in the 45°/135° linear polarization
alignment pattern is revealed using a linear polar- As an example, the results of the 4f system longi-
izer along 45° to align the L4/M2 reflection-type 4f tudinal alignment in Sections 2, 3, and 4 are shown
system. Lastly, the 4f relay system (L2/L3) from Sec- in Figs. 6(a), 6(b), and 6(c), respectively.
tion 2 to Section 3 with a binary amplitude alignment
pattern can be directly recorded using the CCD cam-
era, and the longitudinal distances can be deter-
mined by maximizing the sharpness of the CCD
image. To align the 4f system between SLM Section 1
and Section 2, a phase alignment pattern is required.
Even though phase cannot be directly recorded, a

Fig. 6. Alignment results for (a) amplitude modulation: the

intensity is directly captured by the CCD camera; (b) polarization
rotation: the intensity is captured after a linear polarizer; (c) retar-
dation: the intensity is captured after a circular analyzer. In all
cases, the rectangular dark areas of 100 μm × 100 μm are visible,
with fairly sharp edges. This shows that the 4f relay systems are
well aligned and the blurring due to the diffraction effect is
minimized through the VOF-Gen from the input plane to the
Fig. 4. Flow chart of the alignment procedure. CCD camera.

20 March 2015 / Vol. 54, No. 9 / APPLIED OPTICS 2277

 be realized in the specific SLM section could be visu-
alized by the user using a CCD camera. In particular,
the 4f imaging system’s longitudinal alignment
could be determined by adjusting the distances to
obtain optimal sharpness, where the diffraction
blurring effect was minimized.
Further improvement can be made so that rather
than observing the sharpness of the CCD images, a
computer algorithm can be developed to numerically
evaluate the sharpness through standard deviation
or differential calculation. Implementing this calcu-
lation in a computer script will ensure quantitative
feedback that is more consistent and objective.
W. Han was supported in part by the University of
Dayton Office for Graduate Academic Affairs
through the Dissertation Year Fellowship and the
Graduate Student Summer Fellowship Program.
This work was done while W. Han and W. Cheng
Fig. 7. Comparison of the same patterns generated by the VOF- were at the University of Dayton. Currently,
Gen system without (left) and with (right) well-aligned 4f systems. W. Han is with KLA-Tencor and W. Cheng is with
Lightwaves2020.
Ring and “EO” logo patterns are generated by the
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