title: Nonlinear optical grating diffraction in dye-doped blue-phase liquid crystals.
abstract: Low-power cw lasers are employed to study grating formation in blue-phase liquid crystals. We observed that undoped samples exhibit vanishingly small optical nonlinearities whereas methyl-red-dye doped samples produce strong nonlinear self-diffraction effects. The nonlinearities are attributed to director axis reorientation, disorder, and lattice distortion by the laser-excited dye molecules. The magnitude of the observed intensity-dependent index coefficient is in the range of 10(-4)-10(-3) cm2/Watt.
authors.affiliation: Electrical Engineering Department, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. ick1@psu.edu
authors.forename: I C
authors.initials: IC
authors.lastname: Khoo
authors.forename: Tsung-Hsien
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Lin