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Light-induced multistability and Freedericksz transition in nematic liquid crystals

Andrey E. Miroshnichenko·Igor Pinkevych·Yuri S. Kivshar
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Abstract

We study light transmission through a homeotropically oriented nematic liquid crystal cell and solve self-consistently a nonlinear equation for the nematic director coupled to Maxwell's equations. We demonstrate that above a certain threshold of the input light intensity, the liquid-crystal cell changes abruptly its optical properties due to the light-induced Freedericksz transition, demonstrating multistable hysteresis-like dependencies in the transmission. We suggest that these properties can be employed for tunable all-optical switching photonic devices based on liquid crystals.

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Andrey E. Miroshnichenko, Igor Pinkevych, Yuri S. Kivshar. 2006-04-20. Light-induced multistability and Freedericksz transition in nematic liquid crystals. https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0604162

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