Abstract

Owing to their complex physical structures and various inter- and intramolecular correlations, liquid crystals can exist in several mesophases. Consequently their nonlinear optical properties are also very complex, with nonlinearity ranging in several orders in magnitudes and response times.^1,2 This paper presents a detailed experimental study and analysis of the nonlinear optical response of a chiral nematic liquid crystal mixture, along with a demonstration of optical limiting effects. The mixture is composed of four chiral nematics with chemical structures as illustrated in Fig. 1. In a previous conjugation and pulse compression study³ the mixture was shown to be highly nonlinear compared to other nematic liquid crystals.

© 1991 Optical Society of America