Speckle suppression using a liquid-crystal cell

A simple method for suppressing speckles in images produced by laser projectors is proposed. The coherence of the laser beam and, therefore, speckles can be destroyed when the beam passes through an electrooptical cell in which a special ferroelectric liquid crystal is used as a modulating medium. The effect is achieved due to the spatially inhomogeneous phase modulation of light when specially shaped bipolar electric pulses are applied to the cell.