Abstract: | We investigate the technical feasibility of the optical implementation of a four-phase-level diffractive element with two {0, pi}-phase spatial light modulators in a fractional Talbot configuration. The space-bandwidth product of the spatial light modulators is seen as the main theoretical limitation of the proposed approach. We investigate the robustness of technological and geometrical parameters on the diffraction efficiency of the whole system. Ferroelectric liquid-crystal silicon backplane spatial light modulators are chosen because of their high reconfiguration rates and good electro-optics interface. Similarly, we assess the influence of liquid-crystal technical parameters on system performance. |