Abstract

We investigate the optical phase conjugation phenomenon in chiral nematic liquid crystal. Nematic chiral liquid crystals exhibit Bragg like reflection – or light stop band – for left or right circular polarization. We use the mixture of chiral liquid crystal cholesteryloleate and nematic E7 mixture in volume proportion 2:1. The photonic band gap of such a chiral mixture can be tuned by changes of temperature and shifts over the whole visible light spectrum (cf. Fig.1a). We enhanced the nonlinear optical properties of liquid crystal mixture by addition of photochromic azo-dye Disperse Red 1.

© 2013 IEEE