Optomechanics of liquid crystals for dynamical optical response of photonic structures

Abstract

We show that the mechanical effect of light on the orientational ordering of the crystalline axis of a mesophase can be used to control the dynamics of the optical response of liquid crystal infiltrated photonic structures. The demonstration is made using a one-dimensional periodic structure whose periodicity is broken by the presence of a nematic liquid crystal defect layer. In this study we report on output light polarization and/or intensity dynamics that depends on the initial molecular ordering and incident light wavelength and intensity.

References in corpus (4)

• Reversible nonreciprocity in photonic structures infiltrated with liquid crystals
• Tunable all-optical switching in periodic structures with liquid-crystal defects
• All-optical switching and multistability in photonic structures with liquid crystal defects
• Optically induced orientational transitions in nematics with planar alignment