Abstract:

Liquid crystal optical phased array (LCOPA) can be easily used for beam controlling and has a lot of advantages such as long-term stability, high speed, small size and weight compared with traditional devices. The phase distribution measurement of LCOPA is an important part of the LCOPA development process and a method for evaluating performance of the device. An orthogonal phase shift interferometry(OPSI) was used to measure the phase distribution of LCOPA. The feasibility and accuracy of the method was certificated by optical phase board experiments, and the phase distribution of LCOPA was measured by the proposed method. The experiment showed the briefness and accuracy of the proposed method. The phase information at ±2 grades of LCOPA was obtained.

Key words: liquid crystal optical phased array, wavefront phase measurement, Jones matrix, PZT phase shift, Zernike polynomial