Ray-Tracing Simulations of Liquid-Crystal Devices.

In previous work, we have introduced the Hamiltonian method which enables to calculate the ray paths of light rays in inhomogeneous anisotropic media in the geometrical-optics approach. With this method we are able to simulate the effect of optical anisotropy in three dimensions. In this manuscript, we simulate the optical properties of multiple liquid-crystal configurations. We demonstrate the resemblance between the optical properties of a gradient-index fiber and a liquid-crystal layer with a Freedericksz alignment. In addition, we investigate the optical properties of artificial liquid-crystal profiles induced by the electric field of a set of point charges. Altogether, we conclude that, in the geometrical-optics approach, we are able to assess the optical properties of any arbitrary anisotropic optical system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]