Laser-Written Tunable Liquid Crystal Aberration Correctors

In this Article, we present a series of novel laser-written liquid crystal (LC) devices for aberration control for applications in beam shaping or aberration correction through adaptive optics. Each transparent LC device can correct for a chosen aberration mode with continuous greyscale tuning up to a total magnitude of more than 2p radians phase difference peak to peak at a wavelength of ? = 660 nm. For the purpose of demonstration, we present five different devices for the correction of five independent Zernike polynomial modes (although the technique could readily be used to manufacture devices based on other modes). Each device is operated by a single electrode pair tuned between 0 and 10 V. These devices have potential as a low-cost alternative to spatial light modulators for applications where a low-order aberration correction is sufficient and transmissive geometries are required.

Automated summary

In this Article, a series of novel laser-written liquid crystal (LC) devices are introduced for aberration control in adaptive optics. These transparent LC devices can continuously adjust greyscale to correct chosen aberration modes with a maximum peak-to-peak phase difference magnitude of more than 2p radians at a wavelength of ? = 660 nm. Five different devices are demonstrated for the correction of five independent Zernike polynomial modes, operated by a single electrode pair tuned between 0 and 10 V. These devices have the potential to be a low-cost alternative to spatial light modulators for low-order aberration correction requiring transmissive geometries.