Switchable on-demand Pancharatnam-Berry phase modulation in polymer-stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals

Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) self-assemble into chiral Bragg reflectors. It has recently been shown that by spatially patterning the reflector’s helical phase, a geometric (Pancharatnam-Berry) phase modulation can be imparted on the reflected beam. Here we combine this approach with electrically driven reflection band tuning of polymer-stabilized liquid crystals. As a demonstration of this capacity, we show dynamically switchable, polychromatic generation of nondiffracting beam modes. We present a novel projection lithography system for reconfigurable helical phase landscape patterning, and analyze the fundamental limits on resolvable feature size in this landscape.