Opticals Effects in Liquid Crystals

✍ Scribed by István Jánossy (auth.), István Jánossy (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 242
• Series: Perspectives in Condensed Matter Physics 5
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In 1988 physicists and chemists commemorated the centenary of the discovery of the first liquid crystals. Fora long period after this discovery, although many significant results were found, liquid crystal research remained a marginal topic of condensed matter physics. The situation changed in the sixties. At that time the remarkable electro-optical properties of liquid crystals were recognized and found soon widespread application in numeric displays. From a more fundamental point of view, the interest in disordered systems. increased in general at the same time. Liquid crystals represented an important dass of such systems. Among others, phase transitions, hydrodynamics and topological defects occurring in them attracted considerable attention. The connection between the liquid-crystalline state and the structure of biological membranes stimulated a Iot of works also. In the present volume we discuss a relatively new and rapidly developing branch of the fi. eld, namely nonlinear optical effects in liquid crystals. Optical studies have always played a signifi. cant role in liquid crystal science. Research of optical nonlinearities in liquid crystals began at the end of the sixties. Since then it became a powerful tool in the investigation of symmetry properties, interfacial phenomena or dynamic behaviour. Furthermore, several new aspects of nonlinear processes were demonstrated and studied extensively in liquid crystals. The subject covered in this book is therefore of importance both for liquid crystal research and for nonlinear optics itself. The term "nonlinear optics" is used here in a broad sense.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-X
Introduction....Pages 1-27
Front Matter....Pages 29-29
Rotatory Power and Other Optical Properties of Certain Liquid Crystals....Pages 31-38
Reflection and Transmission by Single-Domain Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Films: Theory and Verification....Pages 39-49
Light Propagation in Anisotropic Stratified Media in the Quasi Adiabatic Limit....Pages 50-62
Pseudo-Stokes parameter representation of light propagation in layered inhomogeneous uniaxial media in the geometric optics approximation....Pages 63-66
Study of Phase-Matched Normal and Umklapp Third-Harmonic- Generation Processes in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals....Pages 67-82
Optical Second Harmonic Generation in Various Liquid Crystalline Phases....Pages 83-94
Phase-synchronous optical second-harmonic generation in a ferroelectric liquid crystal....Pages 95-96
The Orientational Mechanism of Nonlinearity and the Self-Focusing of He-Ne Laser Radiation in Nematic Liquid Crystal Mesophase (Theory and Experiment)....Pages 97-101
The effect of an optical field on the nematic phase of the liquid crystal OCBP....Pages 102-106
Optical-Field-Induced Birefringence and Freedericksz Transition in a Nematic Liquid Crystal....Pages 107-110
Fredericks transitions induced by light fields....Pages 111-124
The Influence of the Finite Size of the Light Spot on the Laser Induced Reorientation of Liquid Crystals....Pages 125-135
Nonlocal radial dependence of laser-induced molecular reorientation in a nematic liquid crystal: theory and experiment....Pages 136-141
Reorientation of Liquid Crystals by Superposed Optical and Quasistatic Electric Fields....Pages 142-148
External field enhanced optical bistability in nematic liquid crystals....Pages 149-151
Observation of optical field induced first-order electric Freedericksz transition and electric bistability in a parallel aligned nematic liquid-crystal film....Pages 152-154
Undamped oscillations of NLC director in the field of an ordinary light wave....Pages 155-157
Collective Rotation of Molecules Driven by the Angular Momentum of Light in a Nematic Film....Pages 158-161
Enhanced nonlinear birefringence in hybrid aligned nematics....Pages 162-164
Front Matter....Pages 29-29
Interaction of light waves with nonuniformly oriented liquid crystals....Pages 165-171
Orientational effect of an ordinary wave on a nematic with a hybrid orientation....Pages 172-173
Optically induced twist Fréedericksz transitions in planar-aligned nematic liquid crystals....Pages 174-177
Optically induced molecular reorientation in a smectic- C liquid crystal....Pages 178-188
Transient laser-induced molecular reorientation and laser heating in a nematic liquid crystal....Pages 189-196
Nonlinear Optical Effects in the Nematic Phase....Pages 197-213
Dynamic Gratings and the Associated Self Diffractions and Wavefront Conjugation Processes in Nematic Liquid Crystals....Pages 214-221
All-optical bistability in nematic liquid crystals at 20 μW power levels....Pages 222-223
Photostimulated change of phase-transition temperature and “giant” optical nonlinearity of liquid crystals....Pages 224-228
Back Matter....Pages 229-234

✦ Subjects

Condensed Matter Physics; Optics, Optoelectronics, Plasmonics and Optical Devices