The Depolarization of Light Scattered from Liquid Crystals

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A helium-neon gas laser was used to determine the depolarization factors as a function of temperature and scattering angle for bulk mesomorphic materials. These studies were conducted with the incoming polarization both parallel and perpendicular to the plane formed by the incident and scattered waves. In general there exist fairly constant values of the depolarization factors except in a temperature region near a meso-mesophase or clearing point transition. The data also exhibit pretransitional and post-transitional fluctuation regions, i.e., regions where the scattered intensities vary rapidly with time. The measurement of the depolarization factors is an ideal way to test thermal equilibrium processes. After temperature equilibrium is maintained the smectic and cholesteric phases require at least an hour to reach thermal equilibrium. This result is of prime importance for studies of bulk mesomorphic materials.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: