Low disorder, site-resolved and programmable gauge fields with a spatiotemporally incoherent light source for ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

The ability to project arbitrary optical potentials at high frame rates is crucial for a wide range of applications, including the engineering of synthetic gauge fields, local addressing, and dynamic trapping. However, existing wavefront engineering technologies are often limited by optical aberrations and unwanted disorder in the projected intensity profiles. Here, we introduce an architecture for low-disorder programmable optical potentials that combines an image-plane digital micromirror device (DMD) with spatiotemporally incoherent light. Because incoherent scattering adds only in intensity rather than amplitude, the use of an incoherent light source strongly suppresses interference-induced disorder. By mode-scrambling light through a square-core fiber, we achieve low-speckle illumination. We demonstrate fast frame switching in the tens-of-kilohertz regime, enabling the realization of low-disorder, site-resolved, and fully programmable gauge fields. Finally, we compensate for optical aberrations using a deformable mirror for phase correction and employ a Wollaston prism to split and recombine orthogonally polarized light, providing additional control over the effective point-spread function and spatial resolution of the projected potentials.