Filled liquid crystal depolarizers

Abstract

The construction and properties of scattering type liquid crystal depolarizers are discussed. The Mueller matrices that describe these devices are measured and compared to ideal depolarizers and ideal linear materials. The present depolarizers do not perform as well as crystal pseudodepolarizers. Nevertheless, when polarized light is incident on one of these devices the polarization of the transmitted light can be uniform to within 5%. These devices have the advantage that they can be made to areas as large as 30–30 cm or larger, are inexpensive, and can be electrically switched off and on. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.