Polarization ray tracing in twisted liquid crystal systems

In this paper it will be presented different ray trace models that are able to simulate uniaxial birefringent optical elements with twisted structure. There exist already methods to calculate the optical behavior of birefringent elements (including angular dependence) such as the Jones matrix method [2]. But those methods are not based on ray tracing and cannot be linked together with other optical components such as lenses for example. The aim of this work is to enable ray trace simulations of optical systems containing complex birefringent elements and extended sources. The developed models are applied on problems that are related to twist liquid crystal Wollaston prism.