Publication: Temperature-induced tuning of emission spectra of liquid-crystal optical microcavities
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Müllerová, Jarmila
Senderáková, Dagmar
Ladányi, Libor
Scholtz, Ľubomír
Zemánek, Pavel
Pilát, Zdeněk
Ježek, Jan
Bernatová, Silvie
Aas, Mehdi
Jonáš, Alexandr
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Abstract
Emulsion droplets of liquid crystals (LC) suspended in water and labeled with a suitable fluorescent dye can serve as active optofluidic microcavities, since the contrast of refractive index between the LC droplets and the surrounding aqueous medium allows excitation of whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the droplets. In addition, such emulsion droplets can be also stably trapped in three-dimensions using optical tweezers which stabilizes the droplets while investigating their spectral characteristics. We explore various combinations of fluorescently dyed LC droplets and host liquid-surfactant systems and show that the WGM emission spectrum of an optically trapped LC droplet-based cavity can be largely and (almost) reversibly tuned by controlled changes of the ambient temperature that induce phase transitions in the LC droplets. Our results indicate feasibility of this approach for creating miniature tunable sources of coherent light.
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Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Subject
Physics, Optics
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Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
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DOI
10.1117/12.2262495