Suppression of selected diffraction orders with programmable masks written on spatial light modulators

We present a technique for obtaining improved performance of programmable binary phase-only spatial masks written onto spatial light modulators by suppressing one of the two first-order diffracted beams through spatial dispersion. Theoretical and experimental performance studies are presented showing the results of writing diffraction gratings on the magnetooptic spatial light modulator using this new technique. The method works well, although it is extremely sensitive to the optical quality of all the components.