Abstract
Liquid crystals (LCs) are organic materials characterized by the intermediate properties between those of an isotropic liquid and a crystal with a long range order. The LCs possess strong anisotropy of their optical and electro-optical properties. In particular, LCs possess strong optical nonlinearity. LCs are compatible with silicon-based technologies. Due to these unique properties, LCs are promising candidates for the development of novel integrated devices for telecommunications and sensing. Nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) are mostly used and studied. Smectic A liquid crystals (SALCs) have a higher degree of long range order forming a layered structure. As a result, they have lower scattering losses, specific mechanisms of optical nonlinearity related to the smectic layer displacement without the mass density change, and they can be used in nonlinear optical applications. We theoretically studied the nonlinear optical phenomena in a silicon-SALC waveguide. We have shown theoretically that the stimulated light scattering (SLS) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) caused by SALC nonlinearity can occur in the silicon-SALC waveguide. We evaluated the smectic layer displacement, the SALC hydrodynamic velocity, and the slowly varying amplitudes (SVAs) of the interfering optical waves.
Highlights
Liquid crystals (LCs) are promising candidates for applications in novel integrated devices for telecommunications, sensing, and lab-on-chip bioscience [1]
We investigated theoretically the nonlinear optical phenomena in the optical slab waveguide with the Smectic A liquid crystals (SALCs) core
We have shown that the single mode regime can be realized for the waveguide core thickness of about 1–2 μm and optical wavelength of λopt ∼ 1.35–1.55 μm important for the optical communication applications
Summary
Liquid crystals (LCs) are promising candidates for applications in novel integrated devices for telecommunications, sensing, and lab-on-chip bioscience [1]. Liquid crystals (LCs) may be used as a waveguide core where the modulation and switching of photonic signals is possible by using electro-optic or nonlinear optic effects [1,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Thermotropic LCs are most widely used and studied because of their extraordinary linear, electro-optical, and nonlinear optical properties and the possibility to control the transitions between different mesophases by varying the operating temperature [1,2]. The scattering losses in smectic waveguides caused by dynamic distortions of the smectic layer planes are several orders of magnitude lower than in nematic waveguides [2,24], and SLCs may be used in nonlinear optical applications [2].
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