Optimal Control of Passive Cascaded Liquid Crystal Polarization Gratings

Abstract

The incidence angle of a beam entering a liquid crystal variable retarder (LCVR) and the liquid crystal polarization grating (LCPG) is greater when the LCPG is utilized in the quadrature cascade, which reduces the diffraction efficiency. Therefore, this study investigates the best method for controlling a cascaded LCPG. By optimizing the control coefficient and the method for controlling the voltage of the LCVR, this study reduces the angle between the incident LCVR and the polarization grating, and increases the diffraction efficiency of the grating. It was confirmed that this strategy can increase the diffraction effectiveness of the quadrature cascaded LCPG through the design of the experimental setup.

Keywords

• liquid crystal polarization grating
• liquid crystal variable retarder
• diffraction efficiency
• quadrature cascading
• optimized control