Influence of phase delay profile on diffraction efficiency of liquid crystal optical phased array

The hardware structure and driving voltage of liquid crystal optical phased array (LCOPA) devices determine the produced phase delay characteristics. The phase delay profile influences directly the device's diffraction efficiency. In this paper, a sawtooth-shaped phase delay model of LCOPA was proposed to analyze quantitatively the influence factors of diffraction efficiency employing Fourier optics theory. Analysis results show that flyback region size is the main factor that affects diffraction efficiency. The influence extent varies with different maximum-phase-delays and grating periods. There exists an optimized curve between maximum-phase-delay and flyback region, and between maximum-phase-delay and grating period, individually. The smaller the grating period is or the larger the flyback region is, the more evident the optimization effect becomes, and the maximum increase ratio is up to 16%. Some feasible experiments were done to test theoretical analysis, and the experimental results agreed with the analysis results.