A pitch of helicoid of chiral liquid crystals and surface plasmon excitation: A theoretical study

ABSTRACTSurface plasmon resonance (SPR) is widely used in different types of optical detection schemes and for light manipulation. There are a lot of experimental and theoretical investigations about the influence of different media, adjacent to the metal layer, on SPR. However, the influence of liquid crystal (LC) layer is not fully revealed. There are only few publications considering Kretshmann configuration with LC layer sandwiched between the prism and metal layer. Respectively, a lot of questions regarding the influence of LC properties on the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) are still open. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap.