[20p-A204-1~8] 12.3 Functional Materials and Novel Devices

[20p-A204-2] Second-harmonic imaging of flexoelectric polarization in liquid crystals

〇Koichiro Shirota¹, Fumito Araoka², Yutaka Yamagata¹ (1.RAP RIKEN, 2.CEMS RIKEN)

Keywords:liquid crystals, flexoelectric effect, second harmonic generation

In general, optical second harmonic generation (SHG) is forbidden in centrosymmetric liquid crystals. If we break the symmetry of the molecular arrangement by some methods, SHG can image induced polarization in such liquid crystals. Here, we induced flexoelectric polarization by applying electric field to nematic liquid crystals, which originally have the inversion symmetry, and succeeded in visualizing resultant polarization by SHG microscopy.