The effect of incident polarization handedness and ellipticity on the laser damage resistance of oriented liquid crystals in the nanosecond regime

Interactions of liquid crystals (LC’s) with polarized light have been studied widely and have spawned numerous device applications across wide regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. To date, little is known about the effect of incident light polarization state on laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDT) for LC’s exposed to high-peak-power, nanosecond-pulsed lasers. This work describes the LIDT dependence on incident polarization for light encountering a LC mesophase in a high degree of molecular orientation. In one example chiral nematic LC, the 1053 nm, 1.4 ns LIDT ranged from 17.7-30.5 J/cm2 in the same device, depending on the input polarization handedness and ellipticity.