Polarimetric analysis of cross-talk phenomena induced by the pixelation in PA-LCoS devices

Abstract

Liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) microdisplays are an element commonly found in advanced photonic applications. Phase-only modulation and spatial light modulators (SLMs) use parallel-aligned LCoS (PA-LCoS) microdisplays due to their large resolution and small pixel size. However, the crosstalk between neighbouring pixels induces several phenomena, i.e. the smoothing of the electric field in the interpixel region known as fringing fields, out-of-plane reorientation of the liquid crystal director, and diffraction effects due to the finite pixel grid pattern. These effects degrade the performance in SLM applications. Therefore, a rigorous numerical analysis is carried out based on a full 3D model that estimates the LC director distribution of the PA-LCoS microdisplay through uniform applied voltages. Once the LC director distribution is known, a numerical finite-difference scheme simulates light propagation across the structure. Here, the impact of crosstalk is analysed from the polarimetric point of view for different pixel and interpixel sizes. It has been found that the finite-patterned pixel scheme induces the phenomena previously addressed, degrading the responses of the Stokes vector components S0, and S1 and also the degree of polarization (DOP). Furthermore, the impact over these parameters is generally inversely proportional to the fill factor. To isolate the influence of diffraction, out-of-plane, and fringing fields effects is challenging since all phenomena are mixed in both time and space, however we have found some useful trends.