Beam-Steering in the Spectrum of a Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulator

In this report we take up some new aspects of optical beam-steering by means of liquid crystal spatial light modulators (SLM's). Our starting-point is that any form of modulation should modify the spectrum of an applied "carrier" [1]. To this end, we devote our interest to diffraction in the spectrum established by these SLM's [2], focussing on applications of smectics (either A* or C* [3]), because these materials have shown their potential, e.g., for rapid switching and small pixel size.