Lasing and waveguiding in smectic A liquid crystal optical fibers.pdf

Lasing and waveguiding in smectic A liquid crystal optical fibers Karthik Peddireddy,1 V. S. R. Jampani,2 Shashi Thutupalli,1 Stephan 1 1 ˇ ˇ2,3,∗ Herminghaus, Christian Bahr, and Igor Musevic 1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization (MPIDS), 37077 Goettingen, Germany 2J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia 3Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, SI-1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia ∗igor.musevic@ijs.si http://www.softmatter.si/ Abstract: We demonstrate a new class of soft matter optical fibers, which are self-assembled in a form of smectic-A liquid crystal microtubes grown in an aqueous surfactant dispersion of a smectic-A liquid crystal. The diameter of the fibers is highly uniform and the fibers are highly birefringent. They are characterized by a line topological defect in the core of the fiber with an optical axis pointing from the defect core towards the surface. We demonstrate guiding of light along the fiber and Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM) lasing in a plane perpendicular to the fiber. The light guiding as well as the lasing threshold are significantly dependent on the polarization of the excitation beam. The observed threshold for WGM 2 lasing is ver