Observation of Optical Bistability in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals |
| B. Pura, I. Gronowska and J. Petykiewicz Institute of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warszawa, Poland |
| Received: January 21, 1997; revised version: May 15, 1997 |
| Full Text PDF |
| In the paper, some experimental and theoretical results concerning optical bistability in cholesteric liquid crystals are presented. A strong primary laser beam interacted nonlinearly with the material and influenced a second (probe) beam in such a way that its transmitted part exhibited a bistable dependence on the intensity of the first beam. It was observed that such a character may be attributed to the intensity of the outgoing probe wave. The obtained results reflect the symmetry of the sample and are interpreted as second order nonlinearity effects. |
| DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.92.527 PACS numbers: 42.65.Pc, 42.70.-a |