arXiv subjects

Przemysław Kula

Publications and source records attributed to Przemysław Kula.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Mirror vs. inversion symmetry breaking in mesogenic dimers: NTB vs. NF phase

The recently discovered twist-bend nematic NTB and ferroelectric nematic NF phases are distinct examples of spontaneous symmetry breaking in liquid crystals. Here, we report the occurrence of both type nematic phases within the same homologous series of dimers consisting of two strongly dipolar mesogenic units linked by a flexible spacer. The NF phase, observed for dimers having spacer with even number of atoms, exhibits the strong polar order; in the NTB phase, observed for dimers with odd number of atoms in the spacer, short-pitch heliconical director structure develops.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2026

Engineering Tunable Synthetic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Chains in Liquid Crystal Microcavities

Optical microcavities have emerged as a powerful platform for emulating topological phases challenging to realize in conventional materials, offering precise control over dispersion, light confinement, and interactions. Among them, liquid crystal microcavities (LCMCs) offer exceptional tunability at room temperature, enabling voltage-controlled polarisation splitting, photonic spin-orbit coupling, and photonic potentials generated by self-assembled textures, such as cholesteric torons and uniform lying helix (ULH). Here, we design a LCMC hosting a dimerized ULH texture and show that the corresponding photonic potential describes two coupled Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chains with orthogonal linear polarisations, acting as an effective pseudospin degree of freedom. The applied voltage tunes the interchain coupling, enabling polarisation-dependent interactions. These results establish LCMCs as a versatile platform for tunable synthetic topological Hamiltonians.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Electrically reconfigurable extended lasing state in an organic liquid-crystal microcavity

Small-footprint, low-power arrays of coupled coherent emitters with the capability of near- and far-field engineering and coherence control are highly sought after to meet modern nanophotonics evolving needs. Between existing solutions based on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, phase masks in bulk traditional cavity-based systems, and lattices of exciton-polariton condensates, only the strongly light-matter coupled systems were shown to be capable of controlled on-chip interaction between the individual coherent states while often operating at cryogenic temperatures. Here we demonstrate electrically controlled in-plane interaction between optically reconfigurable spatially separated lasing states, operating at room temperature in the weak light-matter coupling regime. We show spatially extended coherent lasing state or "supermode" with wide-range micro-scale control of near-field, far-field and on-chip phase-locking tuning functionality. An extended lasing state appears due to near-field transverse coupling between distinct spatially pumped lasing states in the plane of an organic liquid crystal-filled microcavity. We realize electrical control over the interaction strength between lasing states and corresponding mutual coherence going beyond nearest neighbours through electrical tuning of the microcavity optical modes with external voltage, and a spin-selective directional coupling regime by using a photonic analogue of the Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Observation of a supersolid phase in a spin-orbit coupled exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensate at room temperature

In Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC), spin-orbit coupling (SOC) produces supersolidity. It is a peculiar state of matter, which, in addition to the superfluid behaviour shows periodic density modulation typical for crystals. Here, we report the fabrication of a new type of optical microcavity allowing to achieve room-temperature supersolidity for a quantum fluid of light. The microcavity is filled with a nematic liquid crystal (LC) and two layers of the organic polymer MeLPPP hosting exciton resonances. We demonstrate exciton-polariton condensation in the two distinct degenerate minima of the dispersion created by the LC induced Rashba-Dresselhaus (RD) SOC. The condensate real-space distribution shows density stripes located randomly from one condensate realization to another despite the presence of a random disorder potential. This demonstrates the immunity of stripes against disorder (that is, superfluidity) and the spontaneous breaking of translational invariance. We also report the random appearance of vortices via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, another smoking gun of superfluidity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Helix alignment, chevrons, and edge dislocations in twist-bend ferroelectric nematics

We explore surface alignment and edge dislocations in the recently discovered twist-bend ferroelectric nematic, NTBF, in which the vector of spontaneous polarization follows an oblique helicoidal trajectory around a polar twist-bend axis. In a planar cell, the polar axis aligns at some angle to the rubbing direction to mitigate surface electric charge. We demonstrate that the pseudolayers in planar cells form chevron defects, a hallmark defect of one-dimensionally positionally ordered phases, such as smectic A and smectic C. The polar character of the twist-bend axis prevents the cores of NTBF edge dislocations from splitting into semi-integer disclinations, in stark contrast to dislocations in paraelectric and ferroelectric chiral nematics. The tilt of pseudolayers around the defect core allows us to estimate the elastic penetration length as being close to the pitch of NTBF. Compression/dilation stresses around the core modify the heliconical tilt angle of molecules as evidenced by a substantial variation in local birefringence. The climb of dislocations exhibits high mobility, allowing the system to equilibrate the temperature-dependent pitch. The uncovered properties facilitate the development of NTBF materials for electro-optical applications, such as electrically controlled diffraction lattices and structural colors.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Ferroelectricity in the nematic liquid crystal under the direct current electric field

We investigated the electrical properties of the liquid crystal compound, known as an RM734, exhibiting a ferroelectric nematic phase. The influence of alternating (AC) and direct (DC) current electric fields on the switching process of the polarization vector and dielectric constant of planarly aligned ferronematic and nematic phases were examined. The decrease of the real part of electric permittivity in the ferronematic phase and the creation of ferroelectric order in the nematic phase under the DC field were demonstrated. The analysis of the results reveals the latching of the ferroelectric state. The applied DC field created a ferroelectric mode in the nematic phase. A new model of collective and molecular relaxations considering the domain structure of the ferronematic phase was proposed. The temperature and DC field dependence of dielectric properties were shown. The spontaneous polarization was measured using the field reversal technique. The spontaneous polarization value exhibits a maximum at the fixed temperature.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Spontaneous polar and chiral symmetry breaking in ordered fluids -- heliconical ferroelectric nematic phases

It is known that the chiral interaction described by Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DMI) term lead to the plethora of topological structures of magnetic spins, such as helical or skyrmion phases. Here we present the that analogues electrical DMI can lead to similar structural complexity of electric dipoles in soft matter. We report on a new polar liquid phase in which achiral molecules spontaneously form a heliconical structure. The helical pitch is comparable to the wavelength of visible light and unwinds critically at the transition to a uniformly polar, ferroelectric nematic phase. Although this new liquid crystalline phase resembles the twist-bend nematic phase, the mechanism of its formation is different and is attributed to electrical interactions that cause non-collinear arrangement of electric dipoles, similarly as observed for spins in magnetic systems.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Electrically tunable momentum space polarization singularities in liquid crystal microcavities

Momentum space polarization singularities of light appear as vectorial twists in the scattered and radiated far field patterns of exotic photonic structures. They relate to important concepts such as bound states in the continuum, spatiotemporal light steering, polarization Möbius strips, Berry curvature and associated topological photonic phenomena. Polarization singularities, such as completely circularly polarized C-points, are readily designed in real space through interference of differently polarized beams. In momentum space, they require instead sophisticated patterning of photonic crystal slabs of reduced symmetries in order to appear in the corresponding band structure with scarce in-situ tunability. Here, we show that momentum space singularities can be generated and, importantly, electrically tuned in the band structure of a highly birefringent planar liquid crystal microcavity that retains many symmetries. Our results agree with theoretical predictions and offer exciting possibilities for integration of momentum space polarization singularities in spinoptronic technologies.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

In-situ tunneling control in photonic potentials by Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling

The tunability of individual coupling amplitudes in photonic lattices is highly desirable for photonic Hamiltonian engineering and for studying topological transitions in situ. In this work, we demonstrate the tunneling control between individual lattice sites patterned inside an optical microcavity. The tuning is achieved by applying a voltage to a liquid crystal microcavity possessing photonic Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. This type of spin-orbit coupling emerges due to the high birefringence of the liquid crystal material and constitutes an artificial gauge field for photons. The proposed technique can be combined with strong-light matter coupling and non-Hermitian physics already established in liquid crystal microcavities.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Electrically tunable spin-orbit coupled photonic lattice in a liquid crystal microcavity

We create a one-dimensional photonic crystal with strong polarization dependence and tunable by an applied electric field. We accomplish this in a planar microcavity by embedding a cholesteric liquid crystal (LC), which spontaneously forms a uniform lying helix (ULH). The applied voltage controls the orientation of the LC molecules and, consequently, the strength of a polarization-dependent periodic potential. It leads to opening or closing of photonic band gaps in the dispersion of the massive photons in the microcavity. In addition, when the ULH structure possesses a molecular tilt, it induces a spin-orbit coupling between the lattice bands of different parity. This interband spin-orbit coupling (ISOC) is analogous to optical activity and can be treated as a synthetic non-Abelian gauge potential. Finally, we show that doping the LC with dyes allows us to achieve lasing that inherits all the above-mentioned tunable properties of LC microcavity, including dual and circularly-polarized lasing.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Lasing in the Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling regime in a dye-filled liquid crystal optical microcavity

In the presence of Rashba-Dresselhaus coupling, strong spin-orbit interactions in liquid crystal optical cavities result in a distinctive spin-split entangled dispersion. Spin coherence between such modes give rise to an optical persistent-spin-helix. In this letter, we introduce optical gain in such a system, by dispersing a molecular dye in a liquid-crystal microcavity. We demonstrate both lasing in the Rashba-Dresselhaus regime and the emergence of an optical persistent spin helix.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Old experiments in new light: Young's double-slit and Stern-Gerlach experiments in liquid crystal microcavities

Spin-orbit interactions which couple spin of a particle with its momentum degrees of freedom lie at the center of spintronic applications. Of special interest in semiconductor physics are Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC). When equal in strength, the Rashba and Dresselhaus fields result in SU(2) spin rotation symmetry and emergence of the persistent spin helix (PSH) only investigated for charge carriers in semiconductor quantum wells. Recently, a synthetic Rashba-Dresselhaus Hamiltonian was shown to describe cavity photons confined in a microcavity filled with optically anisotropic liquid crystal. In this work, we present a purely optical realisation of two types of spin patterns corresponding to PSH and the Stern-Gerlach experiment in such a cavity. We show how the symmetry of the Hamiltonian results in spatial oscillations of the spin orientation of photons travelling in the plane of the cavity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Application of retardation-modulation polarimetry in studies of nanocomposite materials

We demonstrate an application of retardation-modulation polarimetry in studies of nanocomposite materials. Molecular ordering is explored on both nonchiral and chiral liquid crystals (LCs) in the bulk state and embedded into parallel-arrays of cylindrical channels of alumina or silica membranes of different channel sizes (12-42 nm). Two arms polarimetry serves for simultaneous measurements of the birefringence retardation and optical activity characterizing, respectively, orientational molecular ordering and chiral structuring inside nanochannels.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗