  Structured light is a key component of many modern applications, ranging from
superresolution microscopy to imaging, sensing, and quantum information
processing. As the utilization of these powerful tools continues to spread, the
demand for technologies that enable the spatial manipulation of fundamental
properties of light, such as amplitude, phase, and polarization grows further.
In this respect, technologies based on liquid-crystal cells, e.g., spatial
light modulators, became very popular in the last decade. However, the rapidly
advancing field of integrated photonics allows entirely new routes towards beam
shaping that not only outperform liquid-crystal devices in terms of speed, but
also have substantial potential with respect to robustness and conversion
efficiencies. In this study, we demonstrate how a programmable integrated
photonic processor can generate and control higher-order free-space structured
light beams at the click of a button. Our system offers lossless and
reconfigurable control of the spatial distribution of light's amplitude and
phase, with switching times in the microsecond domain. The showcased on-chip
generation of spatially tailored light enables an even more diverse set of
methods, applications, and devices that utilize structured light by providing a
pathway towards combining the strengths of programmable integrated photonics
and free-space structured light.
