Abstract

The optical properties of surfaced-stabilized ferroelectric liquid-crystal cells are well documented and have been used to form high-contrast-ratio optical modulators. These structures also exhibit second-order nonlinearities because their polar alignment.¹ Waveguiding in the material would be useful both for integration of compact switching elements and for increased interaction length and power density in nonlinear optical applications. We present results from multimode waveguiding structures in smectic C^* ferroelectric liquid-crystal surface-stabilized cells. Our presentation includes loss measurements and analysis of the polarization integrity of the eigenmodes of these structures. Preliminary results indicate that losses are below −5 dB/cm measured at = 632.8 nm, which is an improvement upon waveguides made from nematic liquid crystals at this wavelength. Analysis of the polarization of propagating modes has been carried out by using prism-coupling techniques and indicates that the eigenmodes are not pure TE or TM owing to distortions in the layered surface stabilized structure. Further analysis is being carried out by fabricating strip waveguides determined by patterned-electrode structures. These experiments should indicate the feasibility of making such structures into arrays of switching elements.

© 1990 Optical Society of America