PB44 FDTD Analysis of Light Propagation between Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Droplets

Abstract

Cholesteric liquid crystalline (CLC) phases have self-assembled helical structures. CLC droplets with tangentially aligning boundary condition show the omnidirectional selective reflection because helical axes are arranged in a radial fashion. Moreover, a close-packed array of the CLC droplets gives rise to colorful patterns due to photonic communication between each pair of adjacent CLC droplets. In this study, we numerically simulated the propagation of light reflected from the linearly-aligned array of CLC droplets using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. To confirm whether this method is appropriate for such curved photonic structure, we compared the simulation results with the experimental results and geometric optical calculation.