Boulder Nonlinear Systems is awarded funding for development of broadband high-speed phase modulator

LAFAYETTE, Colorado | March 1, 2015

Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) is pleased to announce an award of follow-on funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for further development of broadband high-speed spatial light modulator (SLM) technology.

SLMs have proven to be immensely versatile tools in microscopy in both the illumination and imaging pathways. However, conventional phase-modulating SLMs are wavelength-dependent and relatively slow for many imaging applications, such as neural imaging and closed-loop adaptive optics. This award will support development of SLM devices using fast geometric phase modulation techniques, which offer wavelength-independent phase control and much higher speeds than current phase modulators.

“The new broadband SLM will be extremely powerful for microscopy applications” predicts Principal Investigator Dr. Jay Stockley, “Broadband modulation enables efficient implementation of novel contrast and resolution techniques that require an SLM in the imaging path of a microscope. Meanwhile our approach aims to provide at least an order of magnitude improvement over conventional phase-modulating SLM speeds.”