Optical properties of hybrid aligned short pitch cholesterics

Diffractive optical properties of selective reflection in short pitch chole sterics are considered in the confined geometry with different boundary con ditions at upper and lower substrates. The main difference in the intensiti es of back selective reflection at the opposite interfaces has been detecte d. Additionally new stable cholesteric textures were found and explored. Th e asymmetric structure obtained may be used as non-reciprocal dichroic elem ent. A new method for calculation of light propagation in stratified inhomo geneous anisotropic media, where optical properties may vary along three ma jor axis is proposed and applied for continuous distribution function calcu lation of helical axes within hybrid aligned cholesteric layer.