Topogical diversity of localized metastable states in chiral liquid crystals (presentation video)

Abstract

Liquid crystalline materials are well-known to exhibit various kinds of structural defects, whose space-variant optical properties are actually useful for a number of applications, including recently developed integrated optical vortex generators. In addition, since liquid crystal defects display well-defined topological features, their very existence also appears attractive in terms of information storage at the microscopic scale. An illustrative example is provided by frustrated chiral liquid crystals films, in which different localized metastable states can be written by either structured or unstructured light beams. We will present recent results regarding the controlled generation of multiple chiral topological states in liquid crystals.