Fisheye lens conoscopy

Abstract

Conoscopy is the visualisation of the birefringence of materials using depolarisation of light passing through with a broad range of incident orientations. In recent years, conoscopy has become an important optical tool in the science of soft materials, such as liquid crystals and polymers, and is widely applied in materials engineering and development, for example in technologies ranging from display optics to plastic food packaging. This paper reports 'fisheye lens conoscopy', a fundamentally new and broadly applicable optical approach to conoscopy that is particularly appropriate for the study of soft materials. These capabilities are illustrated using a fisheye lens system to characterise birefringent and polarising polymer films and liquid crystal test cells. In addition to birefringence measurement, fisheye conoscopic determination of the emission characteristics of commercial light emitting devices such as liquid crystal displays and the transmission of topographically patterned light control films is presented, demonstrating that fisheye methodology can be broadly applied to determine the angular dependence of light emission or transmission in advanced optical technologies and applications.

The 2016 Luckhurst-Samulski Prize

“…Atomic force microscope based method of measuring short cholesteric pitch in liquid crystals. Fisheye lens conoscopy [8] and merit recognition here. In strict chronological order of publication, the first of these seven highly commended papers was by Yuriy Garbovskiy entitled Electrical properties of liquid crystal nano-colloids analysed from perspectives of the ionic purity of nanodopants [10].…”

Optical design of a wide-angle pinhole lens for VR and AR inspection

“…The principle as well as the performance of pinhole cameras were discussed in depth by many researchers in the early years and were applied in the field of cameras [9][10][11] . Later, pinhole lens were widely used to measure the luminance, color uniformity, resolution, and other parameters of displays with the change of FOV 12 . This lens has a large FOV and an external stop to meet the requirements of VR/AR inspection and is nowadays widely used in VR/AR testing.…”

The 2015 Luckhurst-Samulski Prize

“…I am delighted to report that the Prize has been awarded to Ali Alshomrany and Noel Clark for their paper entitled Fisheye lens conoscopy [8]. Ed Samulski announced this decision and presented the Prize to Professor Clark at a ceremony held at the 26 th International Liquid Crystal Conference at Kent State University (Figure 1).…”