Independent spatial intensity, phase and polarization distributions

Independent control of the spatial intensity, phase and polarization distribution has numerous applications in direct laser writing, microscopy and optical trapping. Especially, it is well known that the inversion of the Debye-Wolf diffraction integral usually leads to spatially varying intensity, phase and polarization maps. Here, we present a prism and grating free setup built around a single phase-only spatial-light-modulator for full control of spatial intensity, phase and polarization distributions. These distributions are not limited to non-diffractive beams and do not require any change of setup. We verify the versatility of the proposed method with wavefront and intensity measurements. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America