Extended study on liquid crystal photoanisotropic polarization gratings beyond the small angle approximation

Abstract

By using photo-alignment films, liquid crystals can be oriented and optical birefringence can be induced. We compute the position dependent permittivity tensor that is induced by the interference of two plane waves with arbitrary angles of incidence and arbitrary polarizations. The diffraction by the thus obtained periodic anisotropic grating is studied with rigorous vectorial diffraction theory.