Light-induced chaotic rotations in nematic liquid crystals.

Various nonlinear rotation regimes are observed in an optically excited nematic liquid-crystal film under boundary conditions (for the light and material) that are invariant by rotation. The excitation light is circularly polarized, the intensity profile is circularly symmetric, and the beam diameter at the sample location is a few times smaller than the cell thickness. A transition to chaos via quasiperiodicity is identified when the light intensity is taken as the control parameter. Transverse nonlocal effects are suggested to be the cause of the observed dynamics, and a simple model consisting of a collection of coupled rotators is developed to provide a qualitative explanation.

[1]  S. Arakelian,et al.  Laser-induced diffraction rings from a nematic-liquid-crystal film. , 1981, Optics letters.

[2]  E. Santamato,et al.  Orbital and spin photon angular momentum transfer in liquid crystals. , 2001, Physical review letters.

[3]  M. Rosenblum,et al.  Comment on "Intermittency in chaotic rotations". , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[4]  A. Pikovsky,et al.  Synchronization: Theory and Application , 2003 .

[5]  S. Strogatz,et al.  Phase diagram for the collective behavior of limit-cycle oscillators. , 1990, Physical review letters.

[6]  Bifurcation analysis of optically induced dynamics in nematic liquid crystals: elliptical polarization at normal incidence , 2005 .

[7]  Schreiber,et al.  Extremely simple nonlinear noise-reduction method. , 1993, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[8]  Kurths,et al.  Phase synchronization of chaotic oscillators. , 1996, Physical review letters.

[9]  Lai,et al.  Intermittency in chaotic rotations , 2000, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[10]  H. Kantz.  A robust method to estimate the maximal Lyapunov exponent of a time series , 1994 .

[11]  E. Santamato,et al.  On-off intermittency in chaotic rotation induced in liquid crystals by competition between spin and orbital angular momentum of light. , 2003, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[12]  Peter A Tass,et al.  Phase chaos in coupled oscillators. , 2005, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[13]  R. Spigler,et al.  The Kuramoto model: A simple paradigm for synchronization phenomena , 2005 .

[14]  A. P. Sukhorukov,et al.  Light-induced second-order phase transition in a spatially bounded region of a nematic liquid crystal , 1982 .

[15]  Carbone,et al.  Nonlinear dynamics optically induced in nematic liquid crystals , 2000, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[16]  M. Rosenstein,et al.  A practical method for calculating largest Lyapunov exponents from small data sets , 1993 .

[17]  F. Takens.  Detecting strange attractors in turbulence , 1981 .

[18]  Simoni,et al.  Optically induced chaotic behavior in nematic liquid-crystal films. , 1993, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.