Two Beam Energy Exchange in Hybrid Liquid Crystal Cells with Photorefractive Field Controlled Boundary Conditions (Postprint)

Abstract

We develop a theory describing energy gain when two light beams intersect in a hybrid nematic liquid crystal (LC) cell with photorefractive crystalline substrates. A periodic space-charge field induced by interfering light beams in the photorefractive substrates penetrates into the LC layer and reorients the director. We account for two main mechanisms of the LC director reorientation: the interaction of the photorefractive field with the LC flexopolarization and the director easy axis at the cell boundaries. It is shown that the resulting director grating is a sum of two in-phase gratings: the flexoelectric effect driven grating and the boundary-driven grating. Each light beam diffracts from the induced gratings leading to an energy exchange between beams. We evaluate the signal beam gain coefficient and analyze its dependence on the director anchoring energy and the magnitude of the director easy axis modulation.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 12, 2016
Accession Number
AD1036364

Entities

People

  • David Evans
  • I. P. Pinkevych
  • S. I. Subota
  • Victor Yu. Reshetnyak

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Facilities
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Boundaries
  • Coefficients
  • Crystals
  • Cultured Cells
  • Dielectric Permittivity
  • Electric Fields
  • Energy
  • Energy Transfer
  • Equations
  • Liquid Crystals
  • Materials
  • Modulation
  • Space Charge
  • Substrates

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Materials Science and Engineering.
  • Nanofabrication and Microfabrication.
  • Phased Array Antenna Design.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster