Computational method to determine the pitch length in cholesteric liquid crystals

Abstract Cholesteric liquid crystals are consisted of nematic layers, with a small rotation of the director as we pass from one to the other. This rotation produces a helical structure and the distance to perform one full rotation of the director is known as the pitch length. The pitch length characterizes the cholesteric mesophase and, for this reason, in the present article, we propose a computational method to determinate this parameter with high precision. We use the texture of the cholesteric phases obtained via polarizing light microscopy and an Object Pascal language to write our program.