Abstract
In this Letter, transverse and longitudinal liquid crystal bifocal lenses (LCBLs) are proposed to continuously control the relative intensity of two foci through a simple polarization control. The modulation of a LCBL comes from the geometric phase control and is designed through the principle of holography, where the object wave is a light field from two foci respectively formed by the left-circular polarized (LCP) and right-circular polarized (RCP) light, and the reference wave is the incident plane wave. Constructed millimeter-scale LCBLs are verified experimentally, and the foci are precisely formed at the preset plane. Besides, the relative intensity can be easily controlled with different weights of LCP and RCP light. The proposed strategy overcomes the shortcomings of previous bifocal lenses, such as a complex design method, a long optimization time, and an unchangeable relative intensity, and it is expected to find potential applications in parallel optical processing and optical interconnections.
© 2020 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Jiakun Fu, Yang Yang, Linmao Dai, Zhaoxing Zhang, Xiaochun Li, Site Luo, and Huihui Huang
Opt. Lett. 48(20) 5213-5216 (2023)
Xin Shen, Yu-Jen Wang, Hung-Shan Chen, Xiao Xiao, Yi-Hsin Lin, and Bahram Javidi
Opt. Lett. 40(4) 538-541 (2015)
Ruoxing Wang, Jin Han, Jianlong Liu, Hao Tian, Weimin Sun, Li Li, and Xianzhong Chen
Opt. Lett. 45(13) 3506-3509 (2020)