Wavefront Control Using a Liquid Crystal Television.

This dissertation presents the experimental results of operating a twisted nematic liquid crystal television (LCTV) as a phase modulator for wavefront control. A simple double slit technique and a novel method to calculate phase from the interference pattern have been developed to characterize the phase retardation property of the LCTV. The programmable phase grating, beam steerer, phase lens, and lenslet array have been investigated by operating the LCTV in phase mode. The main achievement of this dissertation is that an optics system which can implement the phase measurement and compensation of a wavefront simultaneously using a LCTV has been conceived and built. The technique used for wavefront sensing in this system is much simpler than all previously known techniques. This system can also serve as an adaptive optics system, and it is the first closed loop adaptive optics system ever built using a LCTV as the phase retarder.