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Abstract

A spatial light modulation technique for a coherent optical processor, permitting binary spatial light modulators to represent a range of grey levels. The technique modulates a coherent input beam at a plurality of spatially separate image pixels, to produce a modulated beam having the image pixels spatially encoded thereon. The input beam is divided into N sub-beams, each of which is passed through a separate binary spatial light modulator to produce a modulated sub-beam. Each binary spatial light modulator comprises an array of sub-pixels, each of which either blocks or passes a portion of the sub-beam. One sub-pixel of each binary modulator corresponds to each image pixel. The modulated sub-beams are then combined. Weighting means are provided for modifying the intensity of light following the sub-beam paths by selected weighting values. The weighting values form a series in which each of N-1 weighting values differs from the preceding weighting value by a factor of 4.

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