Liquid crystals interaction with light

Liquid crystals can interact with light in several ways and such interactions have found wide application as shown in Table 5.1. ... 

With each chapter is designed to be self-contained, the first chapters cover the basic physics of liquid crystals, their interaction with light and electric fields, and the means by which they can be modelled. Next arc described the majority of the ways in which liquid crystals can be used in displays, and Chapter 12, the final chapter of the first edition, deals with photonic devices such as beam steerers, tunable-focus lenses and polarisation-independent devices. In this second edition, four new chapters have been added two on blue phase and polymer stabilised blue phase hquid crystals, which are emerging from the realm of academic research to show promise for very fast response display and photonic devices, a chapter which discusses LCD componentry, and a final chapter on the use of LCDs in 3D display systems. 

Deformed cholesteric. Assume that Eq, (8) describes le initial structure of the director, but that the cell is filled ith a cholesteric liquid crystal with equilibrium pitch = lir/q. For p = we have an ordinary Grandjean struc-ire. Voxp q elastic stresses are present which in principle [lould be revealed when the cholesteric interacts with light, n the Mauguin limit, the equations describing this interac-on are given by (11) except that 2K -K 2K ... 

Display devices based on nematic liquid crystals, notably small liquid crystal televisions, are used as SLMs due to their increased availability [1]. However, in most of the above applications the speed of operation is important, and nematic liquid crystals are too slow, so the emphasis here is on SLMs that use the faster electrooptic effects to be found in chiral smectic liquid crystals. We will start by looking at how these interact with light. 

Table 5.1 Interaction of light with liquid crystal phases and their applications...

Polarized light microscopy is the study of the microstructures of objects using their interactions with polarized light [1,2,23-27,31-33]. The method is widely applicable to polymers [34] and to liquid crystals [34-37]. The polarizing micro-... 

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