Making liquid crystals twitch under metamaterial-enhanced terahertz illumination: toward strong optical nonlinearity
Making liquid crystals twitch under metamaterial-enhanced terahertz illumination: toward strong optical nonlinearity
We provide the first direct experimental evidence for the reorientation of liquid crystals by polarised radiation from a conventional, low power, oscillator-based terahertz time-domain spectrometer. Using a terahertz pump - optical probe setup, we observed that the reorientation occurs locally through the resonant amplification of the terahertz field in a specially designed planar metamaterial, adjacent to the liquid crystal layer, and increases with increasing incident terahertz intensity. Our work thus demonstrates that it is possible to induce strong optical nonlinearity in liquid crystals in the terahertz part of the spectrum, paving the way towards the development of new all-optical active terahertz devices as well as electric field sensors for localised resonant systems.
Liquid crystal, Metamaterial, Terahertz, optical nonlinearity
1008-1019
Beddoes, Ben
35375a11-5785-4874-a0a8-88b50be6cede
Klokkou, Nicholas
28e68acd-c66f-495f-87f3-91235fe03503
Kaczmarek, Malgosia
408ec59b-8dba-41c1-89d0-af846d1bf327
Fedotov, Vassili A.
3725f5cc-2d0b-4e61-95c5-26d187c84f25
Apostolopoulos, Vasilis
8a898740-4c71-4040-a577-9b9d70530b4d
7 January 2025
Beddoes, Ben
35375a11-5785-4874-a0a8-88b50be6cede
Klokkou, Nicholas
28e68acd-c66f-495f-87f3-91235fe03503
Kaczmarek, Malgosia
408ec59b-8dba-41c1-89d0-af846d1bf327
Fedotov, Vassili A.
3725f5cc-2d0b-4e61-95c5-26d187c84f25
Apostolopoulos, Vasilis
8a898740-4c71-4040-a577-9b9d70530b4d
Beddoes, Ben, Klokkou, Nicholas, Kaczmarek, Malgosia, Fedotov, Vassili A. and Apostolopoulos, Vasilis
(2025)
Making liquid crystals twitch under metamaterial-enhanced terahertz illumination: toward strong optical nonlinearity.
Optics Express, 33 (1), .
(doi:10.1364/OE.549912).
Abstract
We provide the first direct experimental evidence for the reorientation of liquid crystals by polarised radiation from a conventional, low power, oscillator-based terahertz time-domain spectrometer. Using a terahertz pump - optical probe setup, we observed that the reorientation occurs locally through the resonant amplification of the terahertz field in a specially designed planar metamaterial, adjacent to the liquid crystal layer, and increases with increasing incident terahertz intensity. Our work thus demonstrates that it is possible to induce strong optical nonlinearity in liquid crystals in the terahertz part of the spectrum, paving the way towards the development of new all-optical active terahertz devices as well as electric field sensors for localised resonant systems.
Text
oe-33-1-1008
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Submitted date: 23 December 2024
Accepted/In Press date: 26 December 2024
Published date: 7 January 2025
Keywords:
Liquid crystal, Metamaterial, Terahertz, optical nonlinearity
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 497525
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/497525
ISSN: 1094-4087
PURE UUID: d72c1a8a-1ded-49eb-b805-604f7c9bd1fc
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Date deposited: 24 Jan 2025 18:04
Last modified: 22 Aug 2025 02:35
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Author:
Ben Beddoes
Author:
Vassili A. Fedotov
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