We demonstrate a new sort of optical fibers, which are self-assembled from a smectic-A liquid crystal. When this liquid crystal is put in contact with water solution of surfactant CTAB, microfibers start spontaneously growing at the liquid crystal-water interface. The fibers are of very uniform diameter and can be several hundreds of micrometers long. They all have a line topological defect in the core of the fiber with a local optical axis pointing from the defect core towards the surface. The ends of the fiber are of perfect spherical shape. By doping the fibers with a fluorescent dye, we demonstrate guiding of light along the fiber. When the fiber is illuminated with pulsed light, which is absorbed by the dye, we observe Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM) lasing in a plane perpendicular to the fiber. The smectic-A fibers are soft and flexible and can be manipulated with laser tweezers demonstrating a promising approach for the realization of soft matter photonic circuits.
In this work we show resonant transfer of light from a planar polymer waveguide into a high index solid microsphere
(BaTiO3) or nematic liquid crystal microdroplet. BaTiO3 spheres were deposited on the waveguide
surface either in dry form or as dispersion in pure water. On the other hand nematic liquid crystal (NLC)
droplets were dispersed in a 10 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in water that promoted perpendicular surface
anchoring of 5CB and therefore radial droplet configuration. Planar waveguides were produced by spinning a
high refractive index polymer (1.68 at 632 nm) onto a soda lime glass. We used two different sources of light,
either 671 nm diode laser or the supercontinuum (SC) laser for the mode launching into the thin film waveguide
using a prism film coupler. The resonant tunneling of light from the waveguide into the high index spheres and
LC microcavities was observed in the case of SC illumination, because the spectrum of light radiated from the
both microcavities clearly showed whispering gallery modes.
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