A Rotatable Waveplate Using a Vertically Aligned Deformed-Helix Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal

We report on a rotatable waveplate using a vertically aligned deformed-helix ferroelectric liquid crystal (DHFLC) in the presence of the in-plane rotating electric field. In such device configuration, the helix of the FLC is continuously deformed and thus the effective birefringence increases as the in-plane electric field increases. The VA-DHFLC rotatable waveplate composed of radially distributed electrodes can transform the polarization state (PS) of an input beam to any PS on the order of 10 musec. This rotatable waveplate would be useful for polarization control in optical communication systems.