Nematicons Interaction in Chiral Nematic Liquid Crystals

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown experimentally that due to the reorientational nonlinearity in nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) it is possible to generate self-trapped non-diffractive light beams for relatively low power. Such spatial solitary waves in NLCs are called nematicons. Very interesting and promising properties have nematicons in chiral nematic liquid crystals (ChNLCs), where the incident light propagates perpendicular to the helical axis.

In this work we report on the experimental studies of the existence of nematicons in such ChNLCs cells. We show that it is possible to utilize multi-layers for propagation of independent and interacting nematicons.

Keywords:

• Nematicons
• reorientational nonlinearity
• spatial solitons

Acknowledgments

The work of U. A. Laudyn has been supported by the European Union in the framework of European Social Fund through the Warsaw University of Technology Development Programme.