High-efficiency, tunable, fringe-field switching-mode beam steering based on a liquid crystal Pancharatnam phase

Abstract

We have fabricated, characterized, and analyzed a recently proposed non-mechanical beam steering device based on the Pancharatnam-Berry phase in a liquid crystal. The architecture of our proposed device employs a linear array of phase control elements (PCEs) to locally control the orientation of the liquid crystal director into a cycloidal pattern to deflect transmitted light. The PCEs are comprised of a fringe-field switching electrode structure that can provide a variable in-plane electric field. Detailed optimization of the director configuration is in a good agreement with experimental results showing that the half-wave retardation condition has been uniformly achieved across the aperture. Moreover, efficiency simulations using a finite-difference time-domain algorithm verify a high beam steering efficiency for the proposed device.