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Observation of cancellation and second light-induced Fréedericksz transition in nematic liquid crystals
Antonio De Luca1, Sarik Nersisyan, Cesare Umeton
1Laboratorio Italiano Cristalli Liquidi and Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, Unità di Ricerca di Cosenza, Italy.
Optics Letters
|March 27, 2003
Abstract:
We describe the observation of a new phenomenon: the cancellation of molecular reorientation that has been achieved in nematic liquid crystals acted on by two competing (pulsed) light beams. The effect is unstable: Starting from the cancellation condition, we have observed patterns related to the presence of a nonlinear phase shift in both beams when their intensity was increased simultaneously. We characterize the behavior of the induced phase shift as a function of the impinging power.