A new twist in twisted nematic liquid crystals: Propagation and optimization of Stokes parameters for arbitrary twisted nematic liquid crystals

Twisted nematic liquid (TN) crystal structures have been widely employed to rotate the input polarization of the light by 90 degrees. For optimum performance, materials optimization is necessary for exact linear polarization rotation. By using Stokes parameter formalism, we derive the generalized relationship, which allows the calculations of the parameters that are necessary for arbitrary rotation of the linearly polarized light for twisted structures with arbitrary amounts of twist. We show that "Gooch and Tarry" relation is a specialized case of our generalized results.