Symmetry Breaking Induced Pockels Effect in a Tilted Field Switching BPIII Cell

Abstract

In this study, we propose driving the amorphous blue phase III (BPIII) with a tilted electric field to enhance or magnify its inherent linear electro-optical properties. The electro-optical properties of in-plane-switching (IPS) BPIII and tilted-field-switching (TFS) BPIII cells are compared here. According to the change in the induced birefringence with varying the strength of the electric field in the TFS-BPIII cell, the Kerr effect occurs in the low electric field and the Pockels effect dominates in the high electric field. In addition, the transmittance of the TFS-BPIII cell depends on the polarity of the applied field from 1 Hz to 10 kHz. It also results in the rise time of the TFS-BPIII cell being almost half of that of the IPS-BPIII cell. These experimental results and discussion allowed us to unravel the mystery of the amorphous BPIII step by step and provide the potential application of BPIII in photonic devices.

Field-induced second-harmonic generation induced by distorted soft chiral crystal

“…By switching the polarity of the applied DC field, a clear and abrupt change in the transmittance curves can be observed, and this asymmetric behavior can be considered as evidence of the flexoelectric effect. Thus, the lattice deformation observed above is accompanied by alternating bend and splay deformations in the disclination line, which may be caused by the flexoelectric effect [43,44], as in the N * phase [33,45]. Moreover, owing to the inhomogeneous fringe field in the IPS cell, the SHG intensities exhibit different distributions depending on both the field direction and strength, as shown in figure 6(b).…”