Liquid crystals under the spotlight: light based measurements of electrical and flow properties of liquid crystals

Optical light modulation in photorefractive liquid crystal cells depends strongly on the relative voltage drop across the photoconductive and liquid crystal layers. This quantity can be estimated using the Voltage Transfer Function, a generalization of the standard cross polarized intensity measurements. Another advantage of this new measurement technique is that we can use it to estimate dynamical parameters of the liquid crystal and of the device, either through simple black-box models or using a full Ericksen-Leslie theory. In this latter case we can obtain estimates of some of the viscosities of the liquid crystal.