Fast optical recording in dye-doped liquid crystals

Light-induced director reorientation in dye-doped nematic liquid crystals w as recently reported to be an efficient method of writing permanent hologra phic gratings with high sensitivity [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1855 (1999)]. We report the achievement of stable director reorientation in the same materia ls by means of a single 4-ns pulse of the second harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser . Fast recording of high-resolution holographic gratings (more than 500 lin es/mm) can be obtained with an energy density as low as 7 x 10(-3) J/cm(2). (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.