DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS In FIG.
4, 4 is an optical phase filter using liquid crystals, 5 and 6 are glass substrates.
On the surfaces of said glass substrates 5 and 6 are formed transparent electrodes 7 and 8.
The electrode 7 has, as illustrated in FIG.
5, a great number of holes 7a distributed at random, while electrode 8 is uniform over the entire area.
All the holes 7a are formed to a round shape of the same size from hole to hole.
7b is a holeless portion.
9 is a liquid crystal layer of negative nematic structure.
In FIGS.
6(a) and 6(b), 10 is a liquid crystal molecule, 11 is a boundary surface between the transparent electrode 7 and the liquid crystal layer 9, 12 is a light incident on the liquid crystal layer 9, 13 and 14 are emerging lights from the liquid crystal layer 9, arrows "a" and "b" indicate the directions of polarization of the incident light, the arrow "b" actually being perpendicular to the paper, and "d" is the thickness of the liquid crystal layer 9.
In operation, when no electrical potential is applied between the transparent electrodes 7 and 8, the liquid crystal molecules in the layer 9 change their orientation to be normal (homeotropic configuration) to the boundary surface 11 over the entire surface area.
If, at this time, the incident light is polarized in the direction "a", no double refraction takes place, so that ordinary rays emerge as the ray 13 passed through the medium of refractive index n.
sub.
o.
When a voltage is applied between the transparent electrodes 7 and 8, the holeless portion 7b of the transparent electrode 7 and the transparent electrode 8 makes only those liquid crystal molecules 10 which lie therebetween become parallel (homogeneous configuration) to the boundary surface 11, as shown in FIG.
6(b).
Accordingly a double-refraction takes place, and extraordinary rays of light result, emerging as the ray 14 passed through the medium of refractive index n.
sub.
e.
The general incident light 12 contains two directions of polarization "a" and "b" as illustrated in FIG
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