Analysis of the optical properties of a helicoidal liquid crystal in a general coupled mode formalism

The optical properties of a chiral liquid crystal (CiLC) are analyzed in te rms of the rotation of the principal axes (RP) together with the one-dimens ional periodicity (DP) along the helicoidal axis. Within a general coupled mode formalism, the helicoidal nature of a CiLC is represented by both RP a nd DP. The formalism developed here is a powerful tool for calculating the optical properties of a CiLC for oblique incidence. Our numerical calculati ons show an exact agreement with the previous analytic results.