Optical isolation via direction-dependent soliton routing in birefringent soft matter.

We introduce optical isolation based on reorientational solitary waves in nonuniformly oriented uniaxial soft matter, namely nematic liquid crystals. A longitudinally nonsymmetric angular distribution of the optic axis provides the system with direction-dependent routing, resulting in an all-optical diode owing to input-side sensitive steering. Numerical experiments demonstrate the phenomenon and its effectiveness in realistic samples.

On the origin of the optical vortex lattices in a nematic liquid crystal light valve.

Optical vortices and lattices of these are attracting the attention of the scientific community because of their applications in various fields of optical processing, communications, enhanced imaging systems, and bio-inspired devices. Programmable optical vortices lattices with arbitrary distributions have been achieved using illuminated liquid crystals with photosensitive walls. Using an amplitude equation that describes these optical valves close to the Freédericksz transition allows us to characterize analytically the vortices and the lattices they form. The numerical simulations of the amplitude equation, analytical solutions, and experimental observations show good agreement.