Transflective spin-orbital angular momentum conversion device by three-dimensional multilayer liquid crystalline materials

Abstract

In this paper, a liquid crystal device for generating transflected optical vortices with high efficiency based on Pancharatnam-Berry phase is devised and demonstrated experimentally. In the experiment, both photo-alignment material and polymer-alignment material are used for assembling three-dimensional distributed liquid crystal polymer and cholesteric liquid crystal. Through the interaction between the incident light and the device, both transmitted light and reflected light get spin-orbital angular momentum conversion. Moreover, the amount of transmitted and reflected beams can be modulated by the input polarization. In our proposal, the device is dual functional, low-cost and simple in manufacturing process.