The generation of flat-top beams by complex amplitude modulation with a phase-only spatial light modulator

Phase-only spatial light modulators are now ubiquitous tools in modern optics laboratories, and are often used to generate so-called structured light. In this work we outline the use of a phase-only spatial light modulator to achieve full complex amplitude modulation of the light, i.e., in amplitude and phase. We outline the theoretical concept, and then illustrate its use with the example of the laser beam shaping of Gaussian beams into flat-top beams. We quantify the performance of this approach for the creation of such fields, and compare the results to conventional lossless approaches to flat-top beam generation.