Nematic liquid crystals light valve calibration and application to phase shifting speckle interferometry

摘要

Liquid nematic crystals are nowadays more often used to change the polarization and/or phase and amplitude of impinging light wave. Nematic liquid crystals valves (LCLV) are also called SLM (Spatial Light Modulator) or LCVR (Liquid Crystal Variable Retarder). This paper will show the different steps required to get a procedure (optical mounting and computing software) enabling the use of LCLV in the output beam of the laser coupled with a 3D speckle interferometry set-up. This LCLV generates the phase shifts between the reference and object beams. The calibration set-up is made of a Mach Zender interferometer with the LCLV in one arm. Interference fringes are obtained and recorded with a CCD camera as LCLV voltage is increased. The fringe processing is achieved with a slice analysis in the Fourier domain. Required phase shifts are then implemented in the phase shifting software. The existing set-up already uses a phase shifter composed by a moving mirror driven by a piezoelectric transducer (PZT). Results of the calibration are compared between piezoelectric device and LCVR. The phase shifting rate and resulting phase error shows the main advantages of the LCVR. The whole set-up, with LCVR replacing the PZT, is finally applied to the determination of 3D displacement fields of Compact Tension Notch sample.