Open AccessModeling of molecular reorientation and beam propagation in chiral and non-chiral nematic liquid crystals
Author(s) -
Filip A. Sala,
Mirosław A. Karpierz
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.20.013923
Subject(s) - liquid crystal , optics , beam (structure) , propagation constant , gaussian , physics , biaxial nematic , gaussian beam , orientation (vector space) , planar , diagonal , polarization (electrochemistry) , materials science , quantum mechanics , geometry , mathematics , chemistry , computer graphics (images) , computer science
The exact molecular reorientation model for nematic liquid crystals taking into account all diagonal Frank elastic constants and using two angles to describe director orientation is presented. Solutions and simplified equations are shown for the most common planar and chiral configurations. Gaussian beam propagation simulated using fully vectorial Beam Propagation Method in nonlinear case is also provided. Detailed comparison between exact solutions and single Frank constant approximation is made. However, no significant differences between these two models were found neither in beam propagation nor in polarization distribution, some difficulties may occur in choosing single Frank constant especially when it comes to quantitative results. Presented results correspond to a propagation of a beam of the Gaussian or topologically similar shapes.