Prof. Irena Drevenšek Olenik: Why one can never get bored of optics - optical properties of periodic structures in liquid crystals
Povzetek:
Why one can never get bored of optics -
optical properties of periodic structures in liquid crystals
Prof. Irena Drevenšek Olenik
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana & J. Stefan Institute, Ljubljana
Periodic structures in liquid crystals occur either spontaneously or can be generated by external stimuli. They are associated with many interesting optical properties, a well-known example being the saturated colour appearance of cholesteric liquid crystals due to iridescence. In the seminar three examples of appealing optical features recently discovered in such systems will be presented: (i) unclonable colour encodings generated by assemblies of cholesteric liquid crystal shells, (ii) puzzling optical diffraction from polarization gratings holographically recorded in liquid crystalline media, and (iii) generation of optical vortices by liquid crystalline structures formed by out-of-plane alignment method.
