Doped chiral liquid crystal systems as photolimiters

THe paper considers the possibility of application of doped chiral systems with properties of dynamic optical hysteresis as optical limiters. The theoretical analysis of interaction of transmitted radiation with a resonant absorbing chiral system is performed using both two-level and multi-level models of the absorbing center. Experimental values of nonlinearity threshold obtained for the system of ketocyanine - nematochiral liquid crystal were approximately 250 (mu) J/cm2 at the wavelength of 530 nm.