A Rotatable Waveplate Using a Vertically Aligned Deformed-Helix Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal

Abstract

We report on a rotatable waveplate using a vertically aligned deformed-helix ferroelectric liquid crystal (DHFLC) in the presence of the in-plane rotating electric field. In such device configuration, the helix of the FLC is continuously deformed and thus the effective birefringence increases as the in-plane electric field increases. The VA-DHFLC rotatable waveplate composed of radially distributed electrodes can transform the polarization state (PS) of an input beam to any PS on the order of 10 μ sec. This rotatable waveplate would be useful for polarization control in optical communication systems.