Design of a liquid crystal based tunable electrooptic filter.

Procedures for designing a tunable liquid crystal (LC) electrooptic filter are illustrated. Selective filtering of one of the two mixed laser lines is used as an example for calculation. It is demonstrated that a LC filter can select a desired beam to pass while rejecting the other one, or vice versa, by switching the voltage biased on the LC cell. The switching times are determined by the liquid crystal properties, thickness, and biased voltage. A multilayered structure is proposed to improve the response times and power loading capability.