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Updated: May 31, 2026

An Electrochemical Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Device for Quick and Low-Voltage Color Modulation
Published on: February 27, 2019
Search for Hermite-Gauss mode rotation in cholesteric liquid crystals
W Löffler1, M P van Exter, G W 't Hooft
1Huygens Laboratory, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. loeffler@physics.leidenuniv.nl
Abstract:
In theory, there are analogous transformations of light's spin and orbital angular momentum [Allen and Padgett, J. Mod. Opt. 54, 487 (2007)]; however, none have been observed experimentally yet. In particular, it is unknown if there exists for the orbital angular momentum of light an effect analogous to the spin angular momentum-based optical rotation; this would manifest itself as a rotation of the corresponding Hermite-Gauss mode. Here we report an experimental search for this effect in a cholesteric liquid crystal polymer, using strongly focussed, spin-orbit coupled light. We find that the relative phase velocities of the orbital modes constituting the Hermite-Gauss mode agree to within 10(-5).
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