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Optics Letters

Laser-heating-induced self-phase modulation, phase transition, and bistability in nematic liquid crystals

Peng‐Ye Wang, Hongjun Zhang, Jian-Hua Dai

Published Jun 1, 1988• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A quantitative discussion of the laser-heating-induced self-phase modulation in nematic liquid crystals is given. The process of the laser-heating-induced nematic-isotropic transition is analyzed. The intrinsic optical bistability due to the nematic-isotropic phase transition is observed and analyzed.
DOI
10.1364/ol.13.000479

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Abstract Molecular reorientation and laser heating induced by an optical field can yield significant changes in the refractive indices in a nematic liquid crystal. A c.w. laser beam is intense enough to induce a phase retardation much larger than 2pi in a nematic film less than 100 pm thick. Optical bistability in such a film sandwiched between mirrors can be readily observed. Coupling between the two mechanisms for induced refractive indices can lead to interesting results in the bistable operation.
The physical aspects of the manifestation of optical bistability, instabilities, and stochasticity in strongly nonlinear media in the form of liquid crystals subjected to laser radiation fields are discussed. The stress is on experimental research. Optical bistability and multistability are considered for a number of light-induced effects in homogeneous and inhomogeneous liquid crystals. The special features of these effects in liquids crystals, associated with the field-induced structural phase transitions, are stressed and the concept of intrinsic (mirrorless) optical bistability is introduced. General nonlinear systems with optical bistability are considered. An analysis is made of instabilities and stochasticity manifested in experiments on light-induced reorientation of liquid crystals in the presence of fields of different origin, giving rise to oscillatory and chaotic processes in the case of self-modulation of the transmitted light.
The properties of intrinsic optical bistability in nematic liquid crystals were studied. This kind of optical bistability is without resonant optical cavity and electric feedback. We find that the nematic ROTN-200 film can exhibit bistability when applying a constant ac electric field (≊560 kHz) that is greater than a tricritical voltage VTc=2.614 V. The bistable interval is measured and the hysteresis loop is characterized at each different voltage. The splay and bent elastic constants k11 and k33 are obtained to calculate the numerical result. It is found that the experimental results are in good agreement with theory. The experimental setup with which we can easily observe the bistable phenomena is illustrated. Under the consideration of the finite size of the laser beam, the thermal effect and finite beam size effect are discussed. In addition, some new interesting phenomena about the diffraction ring structure of nematic liquid crystal are reported.