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Soviet Physics Uspekhi

Optical bistability, multistability, and instabilities in liquid crystals

Sergei M. Arakelyan

Published Dec 31, 1987• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1070/pu1987v030n12abeh003068

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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.
Laser-induced bulk gratings and temporal instabilities of nonlinear wave processes with different components of light polarization have been studied in the liquid crystals (LC). A mirrorless feedback arises because of the non-local nonlinear response of an anisotropic elastic medium on the external field. The multiplicative nature of the molecular fluctuations in the LC under external field are discussed and the light-induced reorientation effects in this medium can be considered as a noise-induced phase transition. . The quantum aspects of behavior of the radiation fluctuations for passing through the LC light are considered. A new method of formation of quantum states of the light in the linear system at dynamic diffraction is discussed for the first time. The squeezed states of the field and the photon superbunching are obtained for two geometries (Bragg and Laue) of diffraction in spatially periodic medium. The approach gives a new opportunities for a verification of quantum properties of the light in experiment.
An analysis is made of nonlinear optical phenomena associated with a change in the orientation of the director of a liquid crystal induced by an optical field and resulting in optical bistability. The usual configurations with a nonlinear Fabry-Perot resonator and several other configurations are considered. Bistable cells with cholesterics are proposed: in these cells the nonlinearity is associated with the absorption of the incident and reflected light and is related—via the temperature of the cell—to the cholesteric helix period. Devices are considered in which switching from one state to another takes place as a result of a change in radiation parameters (such as the frequency or polarization) other than the power.
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.
Although the discovery of oscillatory instabilities (both single-mode and multimode) in free-running lasers was achieved in the 1960s, investigations on oscillatory instabilities in optical bistability did not take place until the 1970s and 1980s. The first section of this chapter does not deal with oscillatory instabilities, but instead concerns an interesting dynamical phenomenon in optical bistability that arises when the input field approaches a boundary of the bistable domain, and is called critical slowing down . This has been investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The remainder of this chapter is entirely devoted to oscillatory instabilities, following a historical order. With an inverse approach with respect to the laser case, we discuss multimode instabilities first. In Section 24.2.1 we start with the description of the instability which arises under exactly resonant conditions. While this is the counterpart in optical bistability of the resonant multimode laser instability discussed in Section 22.5, a striking difference from the laser case is that in the passive configuration there is no corresponding single-mode instability. This difference disappears, however, when we consider the generalization of the multimode instability of optical bistability to the detuned configuration. Finally we show that in the detuned case it has been possible to achieve a convincing experimental observation of the multimode instability in a long microwave cavity. After some relevant miscellaneous considerations in Section 24.2.2, in Section 24.2.3 we address the subject of the multimode Ikeda instability which leads to period doubling and chaos and aroused a lot of interest in optical chaos. We emphasize also the intrinsic connections with the standard multimode instability discussed in Section 24.2.1, showing, in particular, that the Ikeda instability requires conditions far from the low-transmission limit, i.e. that ∝L is not small. In Section 24.3 we discuss single-mode instabilities in optical bistability. In Section 24.3.1 we illustrate a configuration for the single-mode instability that includes also the Gaussian shape of the electric field in the beam section, and leads to periodic, close-to-sinusoidal self-pulsations.