Taming the swirl of self-structured liquid crystal q-plates

Nina Kravets (1) , Etienne Brasselet (1)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine

Spontaneously formed liquid crystal topological defects under external fields offer a nature-assisted route to the creation of geometric phase optical vortex generators (q-plates). Here we report on the consequences of the unavoidable swirled transverse spatial distribution of the optical axis of such optical elements on the beam shaping and we propose a swirl-compensation scheme based on the arithmetic of geometric phase optical elements.

Mots clés: optical vortices; liquid crystal defects; geometric phase

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]; Optique [physics.optics]

Nina Kravets, Etienne Brasselet. Taming the swirl of self-structured liquid crystal q-plates. Journal of Optics, 2020, Joint special issue on twisted waves and fiels, 22 (3), pp.034001. ⟨10.1088/2040-8986/ab6d8b⟩. ⟨hal-02468808⟩