Dynamic control of defocus, astigmatism, and tilt aberrations with a large area foveal liquid crystal lens

We have recently reported the dynamic adjustment of the focal length in an electrically tunable liquid crystal "foveal" lens, the center of which can be shifted over a large working area. In the present work, we show that this design allows also the independent generation of astigmatism with arbitrary axis and tilt of the light wavefront by simply changing the phase and the voltage differences between 4 control electrodes. Furthermore, we also demonstrate the capability of generating highly localized negative (defocusing) lenses with the same device by using a dual frequency liquid crystal.