Design of optical bandpass filters based on a two-material multilayer structure.

An easy method for designing filters with equalized passband ripples of a given magnitude is proposed. The filter, which is made of two dielectric materials, comprises coupled half-wavelength resonators and multilayer mirrors. The filter design begins with the synthesis of the multimaterial filter prototype whose mirrors consist of quarter-wavelength layers. Optimal refractive indices of the layers in the prototype are obtained by a special optimization based on universal rules. The thicknesses of the mirrors' layers in the final filter are computed using derived formulas. A design procedure example for silicon-air bandpass filters with a fractional bandwidth of 1% is described.

Angular tuning of defect modes spectrum in the one-dimensional photonic crystal with liquid-crystal layer.

A one-dimensional ZrO(2)/SiO(2) photonic crystal with a 4-n -pentyl-4' -cyanobiphenyl (5CB) nematic defect layer was used to investigate the transmission spectra of light polarized parallel and perpendicular to the liquid-crystal director at different angles of incidence. The spectra of the photonic crystal were shown to split into four polarized components T(ij) at oblique incidence. When the incident angle increased, the bandgap edges and the defect modes shifted towards short wavelengths, while the amplitudes of the defect modes increased for the transverse magnetic polarization and decreased for the transverse electric polarization. The observed discrepancy between the defect mode amplitudes in the center and near the edges of the photonic bandgap was found to be related to the radiation losses inside the defect layer of a non-ideal photonic crystal. The simulated transmission spectra obtained using recurrence relations and taking into account the decay of defect modes are in good agreement with the experimental data.

Temperature dependence of the effective anchoring energy for a nematic-ferroelectric interface.

Specific features of the anisotropic interaction between a nematic mixture and a polar surface of a ferroelectric triglycine sulfate crystal have been studied over a wide temperature range including the substrate's Curie point T(c). The mixture was composed of two nematic liquid crystals, 60% of p-methoxybenzylidene-p-n-butylaniline (MBBA) and 40% of p-ethoxybenzylidene-p-n-butylaniline (EBBA), and doped with a small amount of a dichroic dye. The temperature dependence of the polarized components of optical density D(j) of the dye absorption band for the nematic and isotropic phases of the MBBA+EBBA mixture has been obtained using polarization optic techniques. The temperature-induced structural changes in the nematic layer near T(c) were found to be related to the changes in the orientational part of the tensor order parameter Q(ik). The experimental data have been interpreted using the model, in which the dispersive van der Waals forces of the substrate stabilize the planar orientation of the nematic in the bulk competing with the short-range anchoring forces in the vicinity of T(c). At the same time, the anisotropic part of the surface energy has two terms with the orthogonal easy axes. The nature of the surface electric field and its effect on the director alignment at the interface have been clarified. Taking into account the known relation between anchoring strength and the nematic order parameter, the effective anchoring energy w(eff) for the studied system has been determined as a function of temperature.