Abstract
Low-power cw lasers are employed to study grating formation in blue-phase liquid crystals. We observed that undoped samples exhibit vanishingly small optical nonlinearities whereas methyl-red-dye doped samples produce strong nonlinear self-diffraction effects. The nonlinearities are attributed to director axis reorientation, disorder, and lattice distortion by the laser-excited dye molecules. The magnitude of the observed intensity-dependent index coefficient is in the range of 10-4 - 10-3 cm 2/Watt.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3225-3227 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Journal | Optics Letters |
Volume | 37 |
Issue number | 15 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 1 2012 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics