Wide angle Liquid Crystal Optical Phased Array

Accurate modeling of a high resolution, liquid crystal (LC) based, Optical Phased Array (OPA) is shown. The simulation shows excellent agreement with a test 2-D LC OPA. The modeling method is extendable to cases where the array element size is close to the wavelength of light. Where the fringe field of such a device is first studied and then strongly reduced to achieve ±7.4° continuous beam steering for 1550nm wavelength at DE higher than 72%.