4.7 Article

Backflow-assisted time-resolved phase modulation in nematic liquid crystal Pi-Cells

Journal

OPTICS AND LASER TECHNOLOGY
Volume 156, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.optlastec.2022.108596

Keywords

Optical phase measurement; Liquid crystal; Analogue phase modulation; Submillisecond

Funding

  1. Engineering and Physical Sci- ences Research Council (UK) [EP/M017923/1]
  2. Punjab Education Endowment Fund

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The study investigates the time-dependent phase modulation behavior of liquid crystal devices under different electric field conditions. It shows that backflow benefits the phase modulation of the pi-cell, but hinders the dynamic phase response of the Freedericksz cell, in agreement with simulations.
By monitoring the time-dependent phase modulation behavior, we demonstrate the benefits of backflow on the phase modulation depth of nematic liquid crystal (LC) pi-cells in comparison to the phase modulation observed for other nematic LC device configurations. Specifically, results are presented for the time-resolved phase modulation of three different nematic LC device configurations under a range of electric field conditions: pi-cell (parallel-rubbed alignment layers), Fre & PRIME;edericksz cell (anti-parallel rubbed alignment layers), and a hybrid aligned nematic (HAN) device. The time-dependent behavior is obtained experimentally with a Michelson interferometer with a piezoelectric scanning mirror in the reference arm, which provides a continuous phase ramp in the reference signal. By recording the interference signal intensity, it is then possible to extract the change in optical phase as a function of time. It is shown that both the pi-cell and Fre & PRIME;edericksz cell exhibit a modulation that is greater than pi radians for a double-pass configuration (2 pi radians for a four-pass configu-ration), with the lowest voltage amplitude corresponding to pi phase modulation being observed for the pi-cell. Through the time-resolved response, it is shown that the presence of backflow hinders the dynamic phase response of the Fre & PRIME;edericksz device but does not negatively impact the behavior of the pi-cell. These results are found to be in good agreement with simulations of the phase modulation for the three nematic devices when backflow is taken into consideration.

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