Arbitrary vortex arrays realized from optical winding of frustrated chiral liquid crystals

Bin Yang (1) , Etienne Brasselet (1)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine

We report on the realization of on-demand reconfigurable arbitrary arrays of microscopic optical vortex generators in chiral liquid crystals. These generators are optically inscribed in frustrated cholesteric films by means of the laser-induced local winding of the chiral liquid crystal mesophase. This leads to the storage of microscopic, metastable, topological defect structures endowed with space-variant birefringent properties. Such structures are shown to produce optical vortices with a well-defined orbital state as a result of a spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion process.

Mots clés: optics of liquid crystals; topological liquid crystal defects; optical vortex generation

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Bin Yang, Etienne Brasselet. Arbitrary vortex arrays realized from optical winding of frustrated chiral liquid crystals. Journal of Optics, 2013, 15 (4), pp.044021. ⟨10.1088/2040-8978/15/4/044021⟩. ⟨hal-00814243⟩