Ultra-fast Dynamic Hologram Generation for Local Addressing in an Atom Array

Abstract

One of the most useful tools for manipulating particles, such as individual atoms, is fast and precise control over patterns of laser light. Current tools lack either the speed or the versatility to be easily used across a wide variety of applications, due to the reliance on slowly-updating holograms generated by spatial light modulators (SLMs), or the limitation to one-dimensional structures for acousto-optic devices. In this thesis we present a system which uses a acousto-optical modulator array to address an SLM from different angles. This allows us to generate multiple spatially shifted copies of an image generated by the SLM, producing arbitrary patterns within a region of interest. We further show that through precise phase control of the resulting images, we can overlap the basis images to create complex interference patterns, including continuously moving pulses of light. We show that the system can operate on a switching-timescale of 50 ns, with low levels of crosstalk between channels, extremely high contrast ratios, and low phase-drift.