Birefringence mitigation (General)
ShalikaSingh - 20:57, Tuesday 10 January 2023 (3142)
Testing the LC

[Shalika, Marc-san]

 

This elog covers details of the ongoing tests of the LC. 

 

Details:

In the previous test, the fast axis of LC was at 90°. We saw a drift from the expected characteristic for <10V. Although the LC behaves as expected at >10V. 

We changed the orientation of the fast axis was changed to ~45°(Fig 1) to understand if this issue continues. 

 

a. The LC voltage controller's RMS voltage was varied from 0.1V to 25 V and was swept with a step size of 0.1V and step duration of 2s. 

b. The LC temperature was observed to be fairly constant at 25±0.04ºC and is shown in Fig 2. 

c. The Normalized Stokes Parameter was observed as shown in Fig.3

d. The Ellipiticty and Azimuth varying with varying voltage were observed as shown in Fig.4 and Fig 5 respectively. 

e. The calculated retardance is shown in Fig 6

e. The laser power observed using the camera is shown in Fig. 7.

 

Next Step:

Try to understand why at low voltages(<10V) the LC drifts from its expected characteristics. We might have incorrectly set some parameters of LC when using the LC voltage or temperature controller. 

Images attached to this report
3142_20230110125739_lc45deg.jpeg 3142_20230110125956_lctemperature.png 3142_20230110130003_normalizedstokesparameters.png 3142_20230110130008_elipticity.png 3142_20230110130013_azimuth.png 3142_20230110130018_retardance.png 3142_20230110130023_laserpower.png