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Molecular crystals and liquid crystals

Optical Nonlinearities at the Interface between Glass and Liquid Crystal

Pedro Menendez-Valdes, José A. Martín-Pereda

Published Aug 1, 1987• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, the optical behavior of a nonlinear interface is studied. The nonlinear medium has been a nematic liquid crystal, namely MBBA, and the nonlinear one, glasses of different types (F-10 and F-2) depending on the experimental needs. The anchoring forces at the boundary have been found to inhibit the action of the evanescent field in the case of total internal reflection. Most of observed nonlinearities are due to thermal effects. As a consequence, liquid crystals do not seem to be good candidates for total internal reflection optical bistability.

DOI
10.1080/00268948708082988

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In this paper, the optical behavior of a nonlinear interface is studied. The nonlinear medium has been a nematic liquid crystal, namely MBBA, and the nonlinear one, glasses of different types (F-10 and F-2) depending on the experimental needs. The anchoring forces at the boundary have been found to inhibit the action of the evanescent field in the case of total internal reflection. Most of observed nonlinearities are due to thermal effects. As a consequence, liquid crystals do not seem to be good candidates for total internal reflection optical bistability.
The reflection of light at the interface between linear and nonlinear media can provide fundamentally novel nonlinear effects such as nonlinear switching from total internal reflection to partial transmission, bleaching of the interface, and bistability. The nonlinear interface is the simplest switching and bistable optical device. Unlike bistable Fabry-Perot resonators, it allows one to use broadband sources of light and remove resonant restrictions on frequency tuning, and offers potentials to attain high operating speed. Experimental demonstration of those effects shows good agreement with some of the predictions of plane-wave theory. Some of the experimental results as well as computer simulation, however, show a new feature of the phenomenon which requires further exploration.
A nonlinear thin film bounded by two dielectric media could act as an optical switching and bistability device, owing to two physical mechanisms at work near the total internal reflection state. One is the simple intensity-dependent index change induced by the finite optical field in the film before transmission occurs, and the other is the nonlinear Fabry-Perot interference associated with the high reflectivities at the two interfaces when transmission takes place. We present a detailed theory for these two mechanisms and for the case in which the nonlinearity is also nonlocal (e.g., in a liquid-crystal film). The results for multiple switchings and hysteresis hold in general for any nonlinear thin film.