Title :
Liquid crystal optical phased arrays: Practical issues and applications
Abstract :
Liquid Crystal Optical Phased Arrays (LCOPAs) are exciting, new optical devices that promise to revolutionize a wide variety of optical systems. We review LCOPA device operation and discuss several practical methods for characterizing their performance. Numerical simulations of LCOPA operation together with characterization data from actual devices are used to motivate a discussion of some of the non-ideal behavior observed in LCOPA devices and how these effects impact actual systems applications. We also examine examples of steered imaging systems and a high power laser pointing system that incorporates LCOPAs.
Keywords :
beam steering; finite difference methods; liquid crystal devices; optical arrays; pointing systems; LCOPA device operation; director response; finite difference numerical simulations; high power devices; high power laser pointing system; liquid crystal optical phased arrays; nonideal behavior; steered imaging systems; Conducting materials; Liquid crystal devices; Liquid crystals; Optical arrays; Optical devices; Optical films; Optical refraction; Optical sensors; Phased arrays; Sensor arrays;
Conference_Titel :
Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, 2002. LEOS 2002. The 15th Annual Meeting of the IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7500-9
DOI :
10.1109/LEOS.2002.1159410
