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Acousto-optic response of nematic liquid crystals

2003; American Institute of Physics; Volume: 94; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1063/1.1628381

1520-8850

V. A. Greanya, Mark S. Spector, Jonathan V. Selinger, B. T. Weslowski, R. Shashidhar,

Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques

The dependence of the acousto-optic response of two nematic liquid crystals on several possible future device parameters is investigated. Several paths for possible optimization are identified. A large enhancement of the acousto-optic response is obtained through optimization of the incident angle of the acoustic wave. The power required for a given cell to reach the maximum optical intensity is also reduced by adjusting the optical angle. This reduction comes at the expense of higher zero-field intensity, and therefore lowers the overall contrast. Finally, the acousto-optic response shows a significant dependence on liquid crystal layer thickness, scaling with the theoretically predicted fifth power of the cell thickness.