Unveiling details of defect structures in chiral and achiral nematic droplets by improving simulations of optical images

Urban Mur; Simon Čopar; Miha Ravnik; Miha Čančula; Slobodan Žumer

doi:10.1117/12.2239585

13 October 2016 Unveiling details of defect structures in chiral and achiral nematic droplets by improving simulations of optical images

Urban Mur, Simon Čopar, Miha Ravnik, Miha Čančula, Slobodan Žumer

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9940, Liquid Crystals XX; 99400V (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2239585
Event: SPIE Organic Photonics + Electronics, 2016, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

There is a great increase of interest in the nematic defect structures, where interplay of confinement, elasticity, anchoring, and chirality leads to complex ordering fields with singular topological defects and nonsingular solitonic deformations. Beside numerous advanced microscopy techniques, the standard polarized optical microscopy is still an elementary first-to-take tool in use. To fully capture its potential and understand the limitations in unveiling the details of complex structures, we apply a recently extended Jones matrix approach based on ray-tracing that allows to include also effects of focusing and numerical aperture. The approach is illustrated with results of recent studies of cholesteric droplets.

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Urban Mur, Simon Čopar, Miha Ravnik, Miha Čančula, and Slobodan Žumer "Unveiling details of defect structures in chiral and achiral nematic droplets by improving simulations of optical images", Proc. SPIE 9940, Liquid Crystals XX, 99400V (13 October 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2239585

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