title: Effective spherical aberration compensation by use of a nematic liquid-crystal device.
abstract: The next generation of optical data storage system beyond DVDs will use blue laser light and an objective lens with a high numerical aperture of 0.85 to increase storage capacity. Such high numerical aperture systems have an inherent higher sensitivity to aberrations. In particular, the spherical aberration caused by cover layer thickness tolerances and--more obvious--by dual-layer disks with a typical separation of approximately 20 microm between the two layers must be compensated. We propose a novel transmissive nematic liquid-crystal device, which is capable of compensating spherical aberration that occurs during the operation of optical pickup systems.
authors.affiliation: Darmstadt University of Technology, Hochschulstrasse 6, Darmstadt 64289, Germany. somalin@prp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de
authors.forename: Somakanthan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Somalingam
authors.forename: Karsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dressbach
authors.forename: Mathias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hain
authors.forename: Svetomir
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stankovic
authors.forename: Theo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tschudi
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Knittel
authors.forename: Hartmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Richter