Liquid-Crystal and MEMS Modulators for Beam-Shaping Through Multimode Fibre

The previous five years have shown a rapidly growing interest in digital micromirror device (DMD) as a spatial light modulator for complex photonics applications, primarily due to their high switching rate, allowing to control the light at the speed unreachable for most current modulators based on liquid crystals (LC-SLM). Here we demonstrate a common technique for aberration correction implemented on both/each DMD and LC-SLM devices alternatively. The experiments have been performed for focusing through a multimode optical fibre. Proposed side by side comparison of the modulators not only reveals key differences between devices, but can serve as the guide, helping the reader to select an optimal solution for a particular problem.