Cell Gap Effect on the Dynamics of Liquid Crystal Phase Modulators

Abstract

This paper provides a complete physical picture of optical response time as a function of cell gap (d) in a wide voltage regime. Normally both rise and decay times are known to be proportional to d ² in the small angle approximation (), and in the high voltage regime where V _π < V < V _i the optical decay time is independent of d. In this paper, we found that between these two extremes there is a region where the response time is linearly proportional to d. Our analytical derivation is confirmed by experimental results.

Keywords:

• cell gap effect
• optical response time
• small angle approximation
• spatial light modulator
• transient nematic effect