Polarization-independent twist liquid crystal phase modulators

A polarization-independent phase modulator based on single-layer twist liquid crystal (LC) with a large number of helical periods is demonstrated. When the number of helical periods of the LC layer is higher than 7, a phase modulator with polarization dependence of less than 5% within most of the phase depth can be obtained. When the number of helical periods increases to 20, the phase depth with polarization dependence of less than 5% is up to 3.36 pi. The LC phase modulator shows a great prospect for application in display, optical communication, and optical sensing devices. (c) 2024 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement