Conversion of circularly polarized light into linearly polarized light in anisotropic phase gratings using photo-cross-linkable polymer liquid crystals

2007 ◽  
Vol 90 (23) ◽  
pp. 231107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroshi Ono ◽  
Manabu Nakamura ◽  
Nobuhiro Kawatsuki
2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1565) ◽  
pp. 619-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Cronin ◽  
Justin Marshall

Natural sources of light are at best weakly polarized, but polarization of light is common in natural scenes in the atmosphere, on the surface of the Earth, and underwater. We review the current state of knowledge concerning how polarization and polarization patterns are formed in nature, emphasizing linearly polarized light. Scattering of sunlight or moonlight in the sky often forms a strongly polarized, stable and predictable pattern used by many animals for orientation and navigation throughout the day, at twilight, and on moonlit nights. By contrast, polarization of light in water, while visible in most directions of view, is generally much weaker. In air, the surfaces of natural objects often reflect partially polarized light, but such reflections are rarer underwater, and multiple-path scattering degrades such polarization within metres. Because polarization in both air and water is produced by scattering, visibility through such media can be enhanced using straightforward polarization-based methods of image recovery, and some living visual systems may use similar methods to improve vision in haze or underwater. Although circularly polarized light is rare in nature, it is produced by the surfaces of some animals, where it may be used in specialized systems of communication.


Author(s):  
Helen F Gleeson ◽  
Tiffany A Wood ◽  
Mark Dickinson

Laser trapping of particles in three dimensions can occur as a result of the refraction of strongly focused light through micrometre-sized particles. The use of this effect to produce laser tweezers is extremely common in fields such as biology, but it is only relatively recently that the technique has been applied to liquid crystals (LCs). The possibilities are exciting: droplets of LCs can be trapped, moved and rotated in an isotropic fluid medium, or both particles and defects can be trapped and manipulated within a liquid crystalline medium. This paper considers both the possibilities. The mechanism of transfer of optical angular momentum from circularly polarized light to small droplets of nematic LCs is described. Further, it is shown that droplets of chiral LCs can be made to rotate when illuminated with linearly polarized light and possible mechanisms are discussed. The trapping and manipulation of micrometre-sized particles in an aligned LC medium is used to provide a measure of local shear viscosity coefficients and a unique test of theory at low Ericksen number in LCs.


2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (04) ◽  
pp. 495-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. BLINOV ◽  
R. BARBERI ◽  
F. CIUCHI ◽  
M. P. DE SANTO ◽  
G. CIPPARRONE ◽  
...  

A comparative study of photo-induced optical anisotropy was carried out on Langmuir–Blodgett films prepared from five different amphiphilic azobenzene derivatives. The anisotropy was induced by a linearly polarized pump beam of an Ar-ion laser at λ=514 nm and monitored by a linearly polarized probe beam of a He–Ne laser at λ=633 nm . Large optical anisotropy up to 0.35 has been induced. Holographic gratings were recorded by two left circularly polarized beams of the Ar-ion laser and time evolution of the first-order diffraction efficiency of the probe beam was recorded in an automatic regime. In such a geometry, the spatial modulation of refraction index reaches 0.14. The experimental data is consistent with a model for a photo-induced collective chromophore realignment in the heterogeneous domain structure of the films studied. The influence of an electric field of the corona discharge on the grating recording process was also studied and polar diffraction gratings have been prepared by a spatially periodic photo-poling process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongkang Song ◽  
Weici Liu ◽  
Xiaolei Wang ◽  
Faqiang Wang ◽  
Zhongchao Wei ◽  
...  

Metasurfaces have powerful light field manipulation capabilities, which have been extensively studied in the past few years and have developed rapidly in various fields. At present, the focus of metasurface research has shifted to the tunable functionality. In this paper, a temperature-controllable multifunctional metasurface lens based on phase transition material is designed. First of all, by controlling the temperature of the desired working area and the polarization of the incident light, switching among multiple focus, single focus, and no focus at any position can be achieved, and the intensity and helicity of the output light can be adjusted. In addition, a polarization-sensitive intensity-tunable metalens based on the P-B phase principle is designed, when the incident light is linearly polarized light, left-handed circularly polarized light, or right-handed circularly polarized light, it has the same focal point but with different light field intensities. Therefore, the focused intensity can be tunable by the polarization state of the incident light.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peristera Paschou ◽  
Nikolaos Siomos ◽  
Vassilis Amiridis ◽  
Volker Freudenthaler ◽  
George Georgoussis ◽  
...  

<p>The EVE (Enhancement and Validation of ESA products) lidar is a mobile, ground-based, polarization lidar system, developed to provide ground reference measurements for the validation of the Aeolus L2A products. The system utilizes a dual-laser/dual-telescope configuration that emits linearly and circularly polarized light at 355 nm  interleaved and detects the linear and circular depolarization on the backscattered signals as well as the Raman backscattering at 387 nm. Consequently, the particle optical properties of backscatter coefficient, extinction coefficient, linear and circular depolarization ratios can be measured by the lidar. Moreover, the system’s dual configuration enables to mimic both the operation of ALADIN on board Aeolus that relies on the circularly polarized emission and the operation of a polarization lidar system with linearly polarized emission. Besides EVE’s main goal of the Aeolus L2A products performance evaluation under a wide variety of aerosol types, EVE can also validate the linear to circular depolarization conversions, which have to be used for the harmonization of the linearly polarized lidar systems with Aeolus, and as such, to evaluate any possible biases of the efforts of these systems on Aeolus L2A validation.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. e1501333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Chen ◽  
Zhensheng Tao ◽  
Carlos Hernández-García ◽  
Piotr Matyba ◽  
Adra Carr ◽  
...  

Bright, circularly polarized, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft x-ray high-harmonic beams can now be produced using counter-rotating circularly polarized driving laser fields. Although the resulting circularly polarized harmonics consist of relatively simple pairs of peaks in the spectral domain, in the time domain, the field is predicted to emerge as a complex series of rotating linearly polarized bursts, varying rapidly in amplitude, frequency, and polarization. We extend attosecond metrology techniques to circularly polarized light by simultaneously irradiating a copper surface with circularly polarized high-harmonic and linearly polarized infrared laser fields. The resulting temporal modulation of the photoelectron spectra carries essential phase information about the EUV field. Utilizing the polarization selectivity of the solid surface and by rotating the circularly polarized EUV field in space, we fully retrieve the amplitude and phase of the circularly polarized harmonics, allowing us to reconstruct one of the most complex coherent light fields produced to date.


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