Moduladores de cristal líquido en interferometría de desplazamiento de fase e imagen polarimétrica

Resumen

This article summarizes the main scientific contributions of the doctoral thesis Liquid-crystal modulators in optical phase-shifting interferometry and polarimetric imaging. The thesis investigated liquid-crystal (LC) optical modulators as programmable devices for phase and polarization control in quantitative optical imaging. At the device level, two LC configurations were studied. First, a Mueller- matrix polarimetric framework was developed for twisted-nematic LC modulators, extending conventional Jones-matrix descriptions and enabling the determination of physical parameters from polarimetric measurements. Second, a special custom ferroelectric LC cell with a large in-plane switching angle was designed and experimentally validated for binary π-phase modulation ideally independent of the incident polarization state. At the system level, LC modulators were integrated into two quantitative imaging architectures. A pixelated parallel-aligned LC spatial light modulator was used for hologram generation and phase-shifting common-path interferometry, enabling phase retrieval of structured optical fields and tailored diffraction orders. In addition, single-pixel LC retarders were combined with a polarization camera to implement a programmable Mueller matrix imaging polarimeter with self-calibration capability and no moving polarization elements. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the use of LC modulators as compact, programmable, and metrological elements for phase-sensitive and polarization-sensitive optical imaging.