Birefringence simulations of single crystals

Form birefringence in helical liquid crystals

The optical properties of cholesteric and chiral smectic liquid crystals are studied, in the limit of pitch smaller than the wavelength of visible light, by means of a formalism borrowing techniques developed to explain form birefringence effects in particulate media. The behaviour of actual stratified anisotropic substances is shown to be accurately approximated, in this limit, by an effective...

Optical Gyrotropy and Birefringence in Magnetic Crystals

Optimal Control of Laser Induced Transient Birefringence in Liquid Crystals

Optimal control theory is applied to design a laser pulse to produce an anisotropic change of the refraction index in the vicinity of the isotropic-nematic phase transition in liquid crystals. The laser induced birefringence originates from the orientational anisotropy induced by the laser eld that is enhanced signiicantly due to the excluded volume eeect. The shape of the optimal pulse is anal...

Large flow birefringence of nematogenic bent-core liquid crystals.

We have found that bent-core liquid crystalline materials show exceptionally large intrinsic flow birefringence in their isotropic liquid phase. This effect is more than 100 times larger than typical values measured for low molecular weight liquid crystals. The specific flow birefringence (i.e., normalized by the flow viscosity) is an order of magnitude larger than in both side-chain polymeric ...

Birefringence of single and bundled microtubules.

We have measured the birefringence of microtubules (MTs) and of MT-based macromolecular assemblies in vitro and in living cells by using the new Pol-Scope. A single microtubule in aqueous suspension and imaged with a numerical aperture of 1.4 had a peak retardance of 0.07 nm. The peak retardance of a small bundle increased linearly with the number of MTs in the bundle. Axonemes (prepared from s...