Patent ID: 8064036

Claim:
An optical device comprising: a birefringent displacer disposed in an optical path of an input beam and optical paths of multiple output beams that are produced from components of the input beam; a first liquid crystal (LC) structure for conditioning the polarization state of incident light and disposed in optical paths of p-polarized components of the input beam and the output beams, the first LC structure having a plurality of LC cells and a first control electrode that applies the same control signal to the LC cells of the first LC structure; and a second LC structure for conditioning the polarization state of incident light and disposed in optical paths of s-polarized components of the input beam and the output beams, the second LC structure having a plurality of LC cells and a second control electrode that applies the same control signal to the LC cells of the second LC structure, wherein the first LC structure and the second LC structure are independently controllable using the first control electrode and the second control electrode, respectively.