Experimental Investigation of the Polarization Plane Rotation of Light in Cholesteric Liquid-Crystalline Film with an Anisotropic Defect Layer

Abstract

This paper experimentally demonstrated that in the cholesteric liquid-crystalline films it is possible to induce defect, which can be controlled by external electric field. Three cases of induced defects were examined and the main result of the experiment is that the rotation of polarization plane has maximum value when light first propagates through chiral liquid-crystalline photonic structure and then falls to the anisotropic layer. We have also supporting calculations, showing an agreement between experimental results and theoretical calculations. We present a new liquid crystal device configuration that performs as a tunable linear polarizer for both polarized and unpolarized lights.

Keywords:

• Chiral photonic crystals
• cholesteric liquid crystals
• defect structures
• selective reflection

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Grant 11-1c194 of the State Committee of Science of the Republic of Armenia.