Unveiling details of defect structures in chiral and achiral nematic droplets by improving simulations of optical images

There is a great increase of interest in the nematic defect structures, where interplay of confinement, elasticity, anchoring, and chirality leads to complex ordering fields with singular topological defects and nonsingular solitonic deformations. Beside numerous advanced microscopy techniques, the standard polarized optical microscopy is still an elementary first-to-take tool in use. To fully capture its potential and understand the limitations in unveiling the details of complex structures, we apply a recently extended Jones matrix approach based on ray-tracing that allows to include also effects of focusing and numerical aperture. The approach is illustrated with results of recent studies of cholesteric droplets.