Liquid crystal-based order electrically controlled q-plate system

Opt Express. 2019 May 27;27(11):16103-16110. doi: 10.1364/OE.27.016103.

Abstract

This paper proposes a liquid crystal-based order adjustable q-plate system. The system, which is solid-state and electrically controlled without any mechanical components, consists of several bit cells and one symbol cell. The bit cells can be electrically selected whether to modulate the beam. The magnitude of the order of the q-plate system can be controlled by activating specific bit cells. And the sign of the order can be changed by controlling the voltages in the symbol cell. The whole system can realize the function of the order adjustable q-plate with the order ranging from -2n + 1 to 2n-1 with n bit cells. In our experiment, the system with 4 bits is verified. Based on the q-plate system, the vector beams and optical vortexes with the orders ranging from -15 to 15 can be generated.