Programmable spectral processor based on spatial polarization manipulation with liquid crystal on silicon

We experimentally demonstrate a novel liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS)-based programmable spectral processor, including two cascaded photonic configurations, to realize the state of polarization (SOP) manipulation in the spatial and spectral domain. As the final SOP at each wavelength is linear polarization with a manageable polarization direction, a broadband linear polarizer is used to filter the undesired wavelengths. The polarization manipulation only needs to be implemented along the dispersion direction with a 1D-LCoS. The programmable spectral processor can experimentally reach an intensity modulation depth of 46.4 dB with less than 1 dB polarization-dependent loss (PDL). Moreover, arbitrary power spectral distribution can be obtained with around 40 dB channel isolation. In particular, our experimental results verify that the proposed setup can achieve the adjustable central wavelength and tunable filtering at a resolution of 0.08 nm.