Evaluation of aberrations in adaptive liquid crystal lenses

Inserted into an optical system, a liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC-SLM) enhances the system’s flexibility by dynamically adapting its transfer function to various conditions of the optical measurement or transmission. Owing to the high birefringence and low driving voltages of liquid crystals, recent research efforts brought forth a number of very specialized types of LC-SLM such as active beam steering elements1, deformable mirrors2 and adaptive lenses3.