Phase smoothing and polarisation-phase synchronous smoothing based on liquid crystal Pancharatnam-Berry phase devices

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we proposed and fabricated a liquid crystal random-phase plate (LCRPP) for laser beam phase smoothing, while the simulation and experimental verification of LCRPP applied to laser beam’s smoothing were also carried out simultaneously. A new beam smoothing technology named polarisation-phase synchronous smoothing and an improved algorithm based on G-S algorithm specially designed for polarisation-phase synchronous beam smoothing are also proposed based on liquid crystal Pancharatnam-Berry (LC PB) phase devices. Our work on beam smoothing taking advantage of LC PB phase devices not only simplifies the process, deduces the cost and greatly improves the precision and effect of beam smoothing but also provides a novel way for spatial beam shaping, which is of wide applications in laser processing.