0000000000291241
AUTHOR
David Marco
Using birefringence colors to evaluate a tunable liquid-crystal q-plate
Q-plates are geometrical phase elements that enable the realization of vector beams in simple and compact optical setups. In this work, we consider a tunable liquid-crystal commercial q-plate operative in the visible and near-IR range and study its spectral and color birefringence properties under broadband illumination. We first characterize the spectral retardance function of the device in a wide range from 400 to 1600 nm and determine how it changes upon applied voltage. Then we evaluate the color transmission characteristics when inserting the q-plate between crossed and parallel linear polarizers. These color properties agree with the trajectory in the CIExy chromaticity diagram as the…
Vector modes generation using efficient on-axis system
Arbitrary polarized vector beam modes are efficiently generated. We use two flicker-free liquid-crystal on silicon (LCOS) spatial light modulators (SLM) in an on-axis common path architecture. Different superpositions of vector modes are obtained with high light efficiency.
Efficient on-axis SLM engineering of optical vector modes
Abstract This work presents a method for the efficient experimental generation of arbitrary polarized vector beam modes. The optical system employs two liquid-crystal on silicon (LCOS) spatial light modulators (SLM) in a common path architecture, avoiding the use of beam-splitters. Each SLM displays a different phase-only mask, each one encoding a different pattern onto two orthogonal linear polarization components of the input beam. These phase-only masks are designed using a recently proposed random technique to encode complex amplitude values. This encoding technique reconstructs the complex function on-axis, thus avoiding incorporating carrier phases. By addressing such properly designe…