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34.1: Invited Paper : Slowing Light in Liquid Crystals
Author(s) -
Wei Dong,
Bortolozzo Umberto,
Residori Stefania,
Huignard JeanPierre
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
sid symposium digest of technical papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 2168-0159
pISSN - 0097-966X
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-0159.2014.tb00125.x
Subject(s) - dispersion (optics) , materials science , liquid crystal , optoelectronics , refractive index , substrate (aquarium) , isomerization , photoconductivity , optics , molecule , crystal (programming language) , chemistry , physics , computer science , organic chemistry , oceanography , programming language , geology , catalysis
Steep dispersion is obtained by exploiting the large optically induced refractive index change in liquid crystal media. This effect is observed either in devices made by the association of liquid crystals with a photoconductive substrate or by employing the photo‐isomerization of azo‐dye molecules hosted in a chiral liquid crystal structure. When interacting in these media, a pulse of light that is relatively long becomes delayed, hence, slow light phenomena are obtained with steep dispersion, a feature that can be exploited for improving the performances of optical sensors.