Diffractive distortion of a pixelated computer-generated hologram with oblique illumination

Computer-generated holograms (CGHs) have their phase and/or amplitude modulation pattern calculated rather than recorded as for traditional holograms. In practice, the CGH devices are normally pixelated, no matter if they are passive or active ones. In many cases, the reconstruction light illuminates on the CGH devices obliquely, and the pattern generated on the target plane will be distorted from the originally desired one, even if the modulation on the CGH devices has been calibrated for the corresponding illumination angle in CGH calculation and optimization. The distortion is purely related to the diffraction behavior resulting from the geometry of the pixel on the CGH, and therefore diffractive distortion has been coined for this specific phenomenon. In this paper, quantitative analysis of diffractive distortion and a corresponding scheme for correction have been given based on scalar diffraction theory. The proposed concept is that the distortion of the reconstructed image is proportional to the distortion of the signal window. An experiment has been conducted with a phase-type liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulator (SLM). Both the distortion analysis and the correction scheme have been verified quantitatively for various illumination angles and the direction of the reconstruction light.