Switchable circular beam deflectors

In this work, we report two types of electrically tunable photonic devices with circularly symmetric polarization independent beam steering performance (beam condensing resp. beam broadening). The devices consist of circular micro grating structures combined with nematic liquid crystal (LC) layers with anti-parallel alignment. A single beam deflector converts a polarized and monochromatic green laser beam ($\lambda =543.5$ nm) into a diffraction pattern, with the peak intensity appearing at the third order when $0V_{\text{pp}}$ is applied and at the zeroth order (no deflection) for voltages above $30V_{\text{pp}}$. Depending on the shape of the grating structure (non-inverted or inverted), the deflection is inwards or outwards. Both grating types can be made starting from the same diamond-tooled master mold. A polarized white light beam is symmetrically condensed resp. broadened over 2° in the off state and is passed through unchanged in the on state. By stacking two such devices with mutually orthogonal LC alignment layers, polarization independent switchable circular beam deflectors are realized with a high transmittance (>80%), and with the same beam steering performance as the polarization dependent single devices. (paper)