Low-cost printed holography for the generation of structured light

Recently, the study of structured light fields has attracted great interest, which includes their generation and characterization techniques, as well as their application. Most of these techniques rely on the use of expensive devices, such as liquid crystal spatial light modulators or digital micromirror devices that also require specialized knowledge and software. In this work, we present a scheme for producing low-cost amplitude holograms for the generation of structured light fields. We demonstrate the feasibility of this technique by creating a variety of paraxial modes, such as the well-known Laguerre–Gaussian and Hermite–Gaussian beams. We also demonstrate the potential of our technique in solving the phase retrieval problem to generate 2D and 3D holographic images of objects. Finally, we compare our proposal with the typical generation techniques using digital micromirror devices. Our proposal will pave the path for the generation of structured light beams in more affordable ways for the application in undergrad laboratories.