光开关是实现多光路电子切换器件的重要组成元件。提出一种基于液体棱镜的光开关，该光开关由一个液体棱镜与一个双孔挡光板组成。初始状态下，液-液界面为凸面形状,入射光经过液体棱镜后会聚到挡光板中央，被挡光板阻挡反射吸收，表现为光关状态。当把电压施加在液体棱镜单侧时，为光开状态。并且当在两侧同时施加电压时，液-液界面形变为凹面形状，入射光束发生发散，此时表现为同时光开状态。实验结果表明，该器件在自适应液体光开关中具有较快的响应时间(上升时间：~85 ms；下降时间：~140 ms)以及较高的光衰减度(~965∶1)特性。提出的光开关在光阀、可调光衰减器以及光路由器等方面有着潜在的应用价值。
光学设计 光开关 电湿润 液体棱镜
Author Affiliations
Abstract
School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
In this Letter, we propose an optical attenuator based on the phase modulation of a spatial light modulator (SLM). In this system, we use two polarized beam splitters (PBSs) to control the polarized light and one SLM to modulate the phase of the polarized light. In the initial state, the light beam is divided into p-light and s-light when it passes through the first PBS. When the light passes through the second PBS, s-light is reflected and p-light is detected by the CCD camera. By loading different grayscales on the SLM, p-light changes its polarized state to s-light. The light power can be attenuated during the loading process. Our experiment shows that the system can obtain a wide optical attenuation from 1–27.2 dB. When loading two grayscales, the SLM has a fast switching time of 25 ms under a low actuated voltage of 5.5 V. The response time of the optical attenuator depends on the switching time of the SLM. Therefore, the system can also have a fast response time. By using the method of spatial multiplexing and adding two mirrors in the system, it can also be extended into a 1×2 optical switch. The results verify its feasibility. The optical attenuator has wide applications in photonic signal processing and fiber-optic communication.
230.6120 Spatial light modulators 220.4830 Systems design 110.1220 Apertures Chinese Optics Letters
2015, 13(8): 082301
