Intracavity measurement of liquid crystal layer thickness by wavelength tuning of an external cavity laser diode.

The gap of a planar-aligned liquid crystal (LC) cell is measured by a novel method: Monitoring the change in output wavelength of an external-cavity diode laser by varying the voltage driving the LC cell placed in the laser cavity. This method is particularly suitable for measurement of LC cells of small phase retardation. Measurement errors of +/-0.5 % and +/-0.6 % for 9.6-microm and 4.25-microm cells with phase retardations of 1.63 microm and 0.20 microm respectively are demonstrated.

Magnetically tunable room-temperature 2 pi liquid crystal terahertz phase shifter.

Tunable phase shift up to 360 degrees at 1 THz is achieved with a liquid crystal (LC) device. The key to this design is (1) the use of a nematic LC, E7, which exhibits a birefringence of ~ 0.17 (0.2 - 1.2 THz); (2) a LC cell (3-mm in thickness) with sandwiched structure to increase the interaction length while minimizing interface Fresnel losses; and (3) the use of magnetic field to align the thick LC cell and achieve continuous tuning of phase from 0 to 360 degrees . This device can be operated over a broad range near room temperature.

Single-longitudinal-mode semiconductor laser with digital and mode-hop-free fine-tuning mechanisms.

We report a novel external cavity laser diode (lambda= 1.5 mum). An intra-cavity liquid crystal pixel mirror allows digitally tuning of the laser wavelength to more than 40 wavelength channels of 100 GHz spacing according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) grid. Laser wavelength can further be fine-tuned by varying the driving voltages applied to an intra-cavity planar nematic liquid crystal phase plate. With a cell 52.3 mum in thickness, the output frequency can be continuously tuned over 1.89 GHz. The root-mean-square voltage required for driving the phase plate was from 1.00 to 4.56 volts.