Manipulation of Photonic Nanojet Using Liquid Crystals for Elliptical and Circular Core-Shell Variations

Abstract

We present theoretical studies on a tunable photonic nanojet (PNJ) created by adapting a shell and liquid crystal (LC) core architecture. The shell is made of indium tin oxide and the core is infiltrated with nematic LCs. The application of an external static electric field to the LCs modifies their refractive index, and this allows tuning the PNJ effect in the proposed system. In addition to nonresonant excitation, resonant PNJ excitation is also obtained from a hybrid structure. Both nonresonant and resonant internal field excitations of circular and elliptical PNJ configurations are examined by using a high-resolution finite-difference time-domain method. The calculated results indicate that the proposed PNJ configurations with tunable refractive indices lead to significant changes in some parameters such as decay length, focal distance, full width at half maximum and electric field intensity. Such PNJ designs can be employed in high-resolution optical sensors, optical trapping, and high-density data storage. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.