Structuring light with digital micro-mirror devices

Digital Micromirror Devices (DMDs) can be used as alternatives to liquid crystal spatial light modulators, and due to their high speed and resolution, relatively low cost as well as wavelength and polarization invariance, are gaining popularity in the structured light community. We briefly summarise several practical considerations when using DMDs in structured light, explain how to generate holograms to modulate the amplitude and phase of an incident laser beam, as well as how to generate vector modes with spatially varying polarisation.