Fig. 3: Electrical tuning of the branched flow of light with quasi-plane-wave incident.
a, b Measured profiles of the optical field at different electrical voltages (Vpp): (a) 0 V and (b) 3 V. The incident light is propagating along the x-direction with a linear polarization along the y-direction. Insets: Schematic diagram of the NLC director distributions. The scale bar is 200 μm. c The scintillation index of the optical field along the propagation direction (averaged over ten repetitions) with various electrical voltages. d Measured and simulated scintillation contrast versus the electrical voltages. The error bar represents the standard deviation. e Dependence of the formation factor ρ on the azimuth angle φ and the polar angle θ of the NLC director. Inset: Schematic of the NLC director \(\hat{{{{{{{{\bf{n}}}}}}}}}\) and the optical wavevector k along the x-direction. f Measured optical field fidelity versus the propagation distance along the x-direction for various electrical voltages. The fidelity of a uniform-alignment NLC cell is used as a benchmark. g Measured average branched density (averaged over four realizations) versus the propagation distance for various electrical voltages. The thickness of the NLC film is 20 μm.
