Cell Gap Effect on the Dynamics of Liquid Crystal Phase Modulators

This paper provides a complete physical picture of optical response time as a function of cell gap (d) in a wide voltage regime. Normally both rise and decay times are known to be proportional to d in the small angle approximation (Vth < V < ffiffiffi 2 p Vth), and in the high voltage regime where Vp < V < Vi the optical decay time is independent of d. In this paper, we found that between these two extremes there is a region where the response time is linearly proportional to d. Our analytical derivation is confirmed by experimental results.