Abstract

In this Letter, we report the application of planar liquid crystal (LC) devices in axial focus shaping, proving that LC diffractive optical elements (DOEs) can achieve continuous adjustment of a symmetrical axial light field by changing the ellipticity of the incident light and can flexibly and quickly achieve various axial light field designs through an axial iterative Fourier transform algorithm. The LC DOE achieves a quasi-continuous phase and an extremely high transmittance (98.6% at 1030 nm), which makes the focusing efficiency of the LC DOE with two segments of uniform focal depths as high as 84%. The experimental results demonstrate the accurate optical field shaping effect and the axial intensity adjustable ability of LC DOE, indicating potential applications in optical tomography and precision manufacturing, among others.

© 2023 Optica Publishing Group

Liquid crystal bifocal lens with adjustable intensities through polarization controls

Yingjie Zhou, Yide Yuan, Tibin Zeng, Xiangru Wang, Dongliang Tang, Fan Fan, and Shuangchun Wen
Opt. Lett. 45(20) 5716-5719 (2020)

Cascaded transflective liquid crystal planar lenses enable multi-plane augmented reality

Xianglin Ye, Fan Fan, and Shuangchun Wen
Opt. Lett. 48(22) 5919-5922 (2023)

Optical edge detection with adjustable resolution based on cascaded Pancharatnam–Berry lenses

Yingnan Tu, Ruijian Li, Zhenyu Xiong, Hao Wu, Yuan Ren, Zhengliang Liu, Rusheng Sun, and Tong Liu
Opt. Lett. 48(14) 3801-3804 (2023)

Optical imprinting subwavelength-period liquid crystal polarization gratings with dual-twist templates

Xianglin Ye, Tibin Zeng, Shang Liu, Fan Fan, and Shuangchun Wen
Opt. Lett. 48(8) 2078-2081 (2023)

High-dynamic-resolution optical edge detection based on liquid crystal diffractive moiré lenses with a tunable focal length

Yue Yin, Yang Yang, Ting Li, Yuan Zhou, Yan Wu, Sijia Huang, and Huihui Huang
Opt. Lett. 46(10) 2549-2552 (2021)