Birefringence-induced mode-dependent tuning of liquid crystal infiltrated InGaAsP photonic crystal nanocavities

Mode-dependent shifts of resonant frequencies of cavities in liquid crystal (LC) infiltrated planar photonic crystals (PhC) are experimentally observed when the temperature is varied across the LC ordering transition. The shifts can be in opposite directions, even for two very similar nearly degenerate modes. The behavior is attributed to the...

Diffractive Optics of Anisotropic Polarization Gratings

Diffraction gratings are being used to manipulate light in many different applications, such as in flat panel display systems, modern lighting systems, and optical recording. Diffraction gratings can be made polarization selective due to form birefringence. An alternative approach to polarization selective gratings is to use birefringent...

Ray-optics analysis of inhomogeneous biaxially anisotropic media

Firm evidence of the biaxial nematic phase in liquid crystals, not induced by a magnetic or electric field, has been established only recently. The discovery of these biaxially anisotropic liquid crystals has opened up new areas of both fundamental and applied research. The advances in biaxial liquid crystal-related topics call for a good...

Simulations of a liquid-crystal-based electro-optical switch

We present simulations of a novel liquid-crystal-based electro-optical device that enables a switching effect owing to a backreflection phenomenon. In the simulations, we exploit the optical properties of a liquid-crystal layer with a Freédericksz alignment in an unconventional way. The resulting switching effect of the proposed optical design...

General polarized ray-tracing method for inhomogeneous uniaxially anisotropic media

Uniaxial optical anisotropy in the geometrical-optics approach is a classical problem, and most of the theory has been known for at least fifty years. Although the subject appears frequently in the literature, wave propagation through inhomogeneous anisotropic media is rarely addressed. The rapid advances in liquid-crystal lenses call for a good...