Optomechanics of liquid crystals for dynamical optical response of photonic structures

Abstract

We show that the mechanical effect of light on the orientational ordering of the crystallineaxis of a mesophase can be used to control the dynamics of the optical response of liquidcrystal infiltrated photonic structures. The demonstration is made using a one-dimensionalperiodic structure whose periodicity is broken by the presence of a nematic liquid crystaldefect layer. In this study we report on output light polarization and/or intensity dynamicsthat depend on the initial molecular ordering and incident light wavelength and intensity.