Behavior of cholesteric liquid crystals in a Fabry-Perot cavity

We investigate the behavior of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC's) inside a Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity. Although FP cavities filled with various liquid c rystals have been extensively studied, to our knowledge the behavior of CLC -based FP cavities has not been reported. In CLC the twisted structure can be changed because the pitch is a function of temperature. In a parallel-ru bbed CLC FP cavity the balance between strong surface anchoring and elastic energy yield a steplike resonance spectrum. This corresponds to the quanti zed effective pitch that the system assumes when both surface alignments ar e fixed. Experiment results for parallel-rubbed samples are presented and e xplained theoretically by use of Jones matrix calculations. (C) 1999 Optica l Society of America.