Micro-patterned liquid crystal Pancharatnam–Berry axilens

A liquid crystal Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) axilens is proposed and fabricated via a digital micro-mirrordevice-based photo-patterning system. The polarization-dependent device behaves as an axilens for a lefthanded circularly polarized incident beam, for which an optical ring is focused with a long focal depth in the transverse direction at the output, and an anti-axilens for a right-handed circularly polarized incident beam, for which an optical ring gradually expands at the output. The modification of the size and the sharpness of the diffracted ring beam is demonstrated by encoding a positive (negative) PB lens term into the director expression of a PB (anti-)axicon.