Applied Nanophotonics, Liquid Crystals and Biomedical Optics

Ferroelectric liquid crystals with fixed molecular orientations on the boundaries are found for the first time to act as continuous high speed phase-only and amplitude light modulators. This is based on the gradual distortion of the director-polarisation configuration under small external electric field. Due to the splay-twist nonuniformities which appear during the switching the electro-optic response is shown to be highly sensitive to the wavelength, sample thickness, boundary conditions and the polariser- cell-analyzer orientation.