Optomechanics of liquid crystals for dynamical optical response of photonic structures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how light-induced mechanical effects in liquid crystal-infiltrated photonic structures can dynamically control optical responses, with potential applications in tunable photonic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a method to manipulate optical dynamics via mechanical effects of light on liquid crystal molecular orientation within photonic structures.

Findings

Output light polarization and intensity depend on initial molecular ordering.

Optical response varies with incident light wavelength and intensity.

The study shows controllable dynamical optical behavior in liquid crystal photonic structures.

Abstract

We show that the mechanical effect of light on the orientational ordering of the crystalline axis of a mesophase can be used to control the dynamics of the optical response of liquid crystal infiltrated photonic structures. The demonstration is made using a one-dimensional periodic structure whose periodicity is broken by the presence of a nematic liquid crystal defect layer. In this study we report on output light polarization and/or intensity dynamics that depends on the initial molecular ordering and incident light wavelength and intensity.