A 10 Megahertz Spatial Light Modulator

Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.08906 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 13 Jan 2026] Title:A 10 Megahertz Spatial Light Modulator Authors:Xin Wei, Zeyang Li, Abhishek V. Karve, Adam L. Shaw, David I. Schuster, Jonathan Simon View a PDF of the paper titled A 10 Megahertz Spatial Light Modulator, by Xin Wei and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Rapid and programmable shaping of light fields is central to modern microscopy, display technologies, optical communications and sensing, quantum engineering, and quantum information processing. Current wavefront shaping technologies face a fundamental dichotomy: spatial light modulators (SLMs) offer high pixel count but suffer from low refresh rates, while acousto-optic deflectors (AODs) provide moderate speed with restricted optical beam geometries. Though recent advances in photonic integrated circuits achieve fast switching, there is currently no tool that provides MHz-rate, continuous motion, and arbitrarily reconfigurable control over a set of diffraction-limited spots. Here we introduce a new class of spatial light modulator that provides both 2D pixel geometry and high speed. The device operates by encoding spatial information in frequency bins via a broadband optical phase modulator, and decoding them via a first-of-its-kind, high-resolution 2D spectrometer. The spectrometer, based on the architecture which we call the Re-Imaging Phased Array (RIPA), achieves its sensitivity through long path-lengths, enabled by intra-spectrometer re-imaging lens-guides. We demonstrate site-resolved optical pulsing with a 44(1)~ns rise time, corresponding to frame rates exceeding 10 million frames per second, as well as arbitrary, reconfigurable 2D addressing and multi-site operations, including asynchronous, independent beam motion, splitting, and recombination. Leveraging these tools opens new horizons in rapid optical manipulation of matter across science, from fast, scalable control that approaches the inertial and radiation limits of atoms in quantum processors, to dynamically programmable, microsecond-resolved illumination in microscopy and neuro-biological imaging. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2601.08906 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.08906v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.08906 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Xin Wei [view email] [v1] Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:00:00 UTC (15,627 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled A 10 Megahertz Spatial Light Modulator, by Xin Wei and 5 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 Change to browse by: physics physics.atom-ph physics.optics References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)