A technique for director profiling utilising convergent beam excitation offully-leaky guided modes

The recently developed Fully-Leaky Guided Mode (FLGM) technique has paved t he way for using optical waveguiding to study standard commercial cells. Pr evious FLGM experiments have utilised a plane-polarised collimated beam to excite optical modes. Here we describe the use of an alternative convergent beam procedure. The Convergent Beam Guided Mode (CBGM) technique has in ad dition the potential to be used to explore switching dynamics and single pi xels. The work presented here is a demonstration of the CBGM technique via a study of the static director profile of a pi-cell (parallel rubbed) fille d with the nematic liquid crystal material E7.