Application theory of scattering and coupled mode analysis for liquid crystal diffractive grating

This work presents a detailed analysis of a liquid crystal (LC) phase diffraction grating based on a approach combining vector theory of scattering and coupled mode analysis. In general, the coupled mode analysis gives a solution for the diffracted field regardless of aperture and the polarization state of the incident light. However, the aperture of the incident light defines the angular selectivity of the diffraction grating as well as the distribution of the intensity of the diffractive maximums. The solution of the vector theory of scattering in combination with the coupled mode analysis for diffraction of the light beam with finite aperture has allowed one to optimize the parameters of the high efficiency diffractive LC grating. The analytic solutions here were verified with experimental results for a reverse-twisted LC grating and a comparison with the standard Gooch-Tarry's method, which typically applied for a twisted nematic LC display.