Multistable nematic liquid crystal pores as reconfigurable optical vortex metasurfaces
Abstract
Nematic liquid crystals confined in cylindrical pores adopt multiple stable director topologies --- radial, escaped, and arches --- each imprinting a distinct optical signature on transmitted circularly polarized light, with topological charge set by the projected director winding number, ℓ = 2m. Using Landau--de Gennes and Jones-calculus modeling validated against micron-scale experiments, we show that this mechanism persists as the pore diameter shrinks toward the optical wavelength. However, full-wave Maxwell simulations of periodic sub-wavelength pore arrays reveal that the resulting vortex is a near-field phenomenon only: each topology imprints a distinguishable phase-singular signature --- differing in core multiplicity, core width, and ring amplitude --- directly below the pore array, but this signature does not survive propagation into the far field, where diffraction and inter-pore interference erase it within about one wavelength. Landau--de Gennes simulations further demonstrate that an applied electric field switches the pore between topologies, and hence between their near-field optical signatures. Because each topology is locally stable, sub-wavelength NLC pore arrays constitute an electrically reconfigurable, non-volatile platform for topology-encoded near-field optical readout, with potential application to optical labeling and anti-counterfeiting.
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BibTeX
@misc{dore2026multistable,
title = {{Multistable nematic liquid crystal pores as reconfigurable optical vortex metasurfaces}},
author = {Claire Doré and Brian Edwards and Nader Engheta and Kathleen J. Stebe},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.40123},
eprint = {2610.40123},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40123},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Multistable nematic liquid crystal pores as reconfigurable optical vortex metasurfaces
AU - Claire Doré
AU - Brian Edwards
AU - Nader Engheta
AU - Kathleen J. Stebe
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.40123
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40123
AB - Nematic liquid crystals confined in cylindrical pores adopt multiple stable director topologies --- radial, escaped, and arches --- each imprinting a distinct optical signature on transmitted circularly polarized light, with topological charge set by the projected director winding number, ℓ = 2m. Using Landau--de Gennes and Jones-calculus modeling validated against micron-scale experiments, we show that this mechanism persists as the pore diameter shrinks toward the optical wavelength. However, full-wave Maxwell simulations of periodic sub-wavelength pore arrays reveal that the resulting vortex is a near-field phenomenon only: each topology imprints a distinguishable phase-singular signature --- differing in core multiplicity, core width, and ring amplitude --- directly below the pore array, but this signature does not survive propagation into the far field, where diffraction and inter-pore interference erase it within about one wavelength. Landau--de Gennes simulations further demonstrate that an applied electric field switches the pore between topologies, and hence between their near-field optical signatures. Because each topology is locally stable, sub-wavelength NLC pore arrays constitute an electrically reconfigurable, non-volatile platform for topology-encoded near-field optical readout, with potential application to optical labeling and anti-counterfeiting.
ER -