Efficient liquid crystal wavefront modulator

Werner Klaus; Masafumi Ide; Yutaka Hayano; Yoshinori Arimoto

doi:10.1117/12.271383

11 April 1997 Efficient liquid crystal wavefront modulator

Werner Klaus, Masafumi Ide, Yutaka Hayano, Yoshinori Arimoto

Proceedings Volume 3015, Liquid Crystal Materials, Devices, and Applications V; (1997) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.271383
Event: Electronic Imaging '97, 1997, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Liquid crystal waveplates are known as efficient phase or wavefront modulators for applications requiring the active control of laser beams such as beam steering, focusing or diffraction. In developing such devices researchers have used so far two types of electrode structures: (1) the discrete structure where the liquid crystal is modulated by means of a large number of independent narrow stripe-shaped low-resistive electrodes, and (2) the continuous structure where broad electrodes with areas of different resistivities modulate the liquid crystal via a linear or nonlinear voltage gradient generated in the electrode plane. The former approach has the advantage of high transmission efficiency and unproblematic fabrication of the electrodes. The huge number of electrodes requires however a high expenditure in fabricating the complex LC driver. The latter approach keeps down the complexity of the LC driver, however, a high optical throughput has not yet been reported. In this paper, we present an electrode design that aims at combining the advantages found in both approaches. The usefulness of the novel electrode design was verified for the first time in an experiment demonstrating the nearly diffraction limited performance of an adaptive LC microlens array.

Citation Download Citation

Werner Klaus, Masafumi Ide, Yutaka Hayano, and Yoshinori Arimoto "Efficient liquid crystal wavefront modulator", Proc. SPIE 3015, Liquid Crystal Materials, Devices, and Applications V, (11 April 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.271383

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