Photonic density of states of cholesteric liquid crystal cells

Abstract

Using the exact analytical expressions for the reflection and transmission matrices for the finite thickness cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) layer, we calculated its photonic density of states (PDS) of the eigen polarizations (EPs). We investigated the influence of absorption and gain, as well as the CLC cell thickness and CLC local dielectric anisotropy on PDS. We presented the full picture of distribution of total field in the CLC layer and outside it for two EPs. The possibility of connections between the PDS and the density of the light energy accumulated in the medium was investigated, and it was shown that these characteristics had analogous spectra and, besides, the influences of the problem parameters on these characteristics were also analogous. We showed that there existed a critical value of the parameter characterizing the gain beyond which the lasing mode was quenched and the feedback vanished. We showed that in the presence of gain there existed a critical value of numbers of pitches in the CLC layer beyond which the lasing mode was again quenched and the feedback vanished, too. It is shown that the subject system can work as a low-threshold laser or a multi-position trigger.