Electrical Modulation of Coherent Scattering in Dual Frequency Liquid Crystal Tissue Models

Abstract

Molecular orientation clusters are created in a cell of non aligned liquid crystal to study the light propagation in electrically controllable anisotropic non uniform media. Coherent scattering phenomenon and predominant role of large orientation clusters in such scattering are demonstrated. Fast relaxation of molecular orientation and modulation of light scattering in those clusters is obtained by using “dual frequency” liquid crystal mixtures and frequency modulation of the drive signal. The obtained results show the good potential for the creation of electrically tunable tissue models by using liquid crystalline materials.

Keywords:

• Dual frequency
• electro-optics
• liquid crystals
• light scattering
• tissue optics

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr A. A. Delgado for the initial idea and Dr. A. Vitkin for stimulating discussions. We would like also to acknowledge the financial support of NSERC Canada and TLCL Optical Research for the financial and material support.