Nematic director slippage: Role of the angular momentum of light

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical model explaining how the angular momentum of light influences nematic director slippage, showing dependence on light ellipticity and matching experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework linking light's angular momentum to director reorientation and quantifies the nonlinear response in nematic liquid crystals.

Findings

Director profiles depend on light ellipticity.

Surface director deviation can be quantitatively predicted.

Model aligns with experimental observations.

Abstract

We propose a theoretical model of the light-induced director slippage effect. In this effect the bulk director reorientation contributes to the surface director reorientation It is found that the director and ellipticity profiles, obtained in the geometric optics approximation, are dependent on the ellipticity of the incident light wave. The director distribution is spatially modulated in linearly polarized light but grows monotonically in circularly polarized light. The surface director deviation has been examined, and comparison made with existing experimental data, which then permits the magnitude of the orientational nonlinearity coefficient to be calculated.