Large gradients of refractive index in nanosphere dispersed liquid crystal metamaterial with inhomogeneous anchoring: Monte Carlo study

We study the effect of spatial inhomogeneity of anchoring forces on real part of effective refractive index in nanosphere dispersed liquid crystal (NDLC) metamaterial at infrared frequencies using the approach of Khoo et al. [1] and Monte Carlo modeling proposed recently in Ref. [2]. Local and global characterization is made using 2D maps of spatial distribution of the index, its gradients and its modulation amplitude below and above Freedericksz threshold. We find that NDLC with step-wise modulation of anchoring forces gives rise to much larger gradients and absolute values of the effective index than NDLC with modulated external electric field as well as pure nematic liquid crystal (NLC) with inhomogeneous anchoring. This indicates that the filling factor of coated spheres in NDLC is an important design parameter which tunes the effective refractive index. We find that the results are strongly dependent on wavelength in the infrared interval 2800–2900 nm. Some potential applications to molding the flow of light are briefly mentioned.

Research highlights
► Nanosphere dispersed liquid crystal is studied using Monte Carlo simulations.
► Effect of inhomogeneous anchoring forces on optical response is analyzed.
► Large gradients and large values of effective refractive index are found.
► Optical response of metamaterial is strongly dependent on wavelength.