Linear and circular dichroisms of cholesteric liquid crystals in a longitudinal external magnetic field

We investigated the properties of linear and circular dichroisms of cholesteric liquid crystal layer in external static magnetic field directed along helix axis. We showed that when the direction of light propagation and the direction of external magnetic field coincide, increasing the latter magnitude leads to a decrease in the linear dichroism, whereas when these directions are opposite, increasing the external magnetic field (Bext) magnitude leads an increase in the linear dichroism. The presence of external magnetic field leads to the shift of circular dichroism curves both along wavelength axis and along dichroism axis. Then, we investigated the peculiarities of dichroism dependencies on Bext for different wavelengths of incident light. We compared the dependence of circular dichroism on Bext for a magnetically active cholesteric liquid crystal layer and an isotropic magnetically active layer and showed that while these dependencies are similar for wavelengths away from the photonic band gap, diffraction significantly affects these dependencies for wavelengths near and inside the photonic band gap. We investigated the evolution of spectra of linear and circular dichroisms at the change in Bext, too. The results obtained can find application in the design of innovative polarised optoelectronic devices.