Photonics of two-dimensional structures formed by cholesteric liquid crystals

Chiral liquid crystal materials can self-organize into modulated structures with multilevel arrangement formed by curved cholesteric helixes and spatially ordered defects. We managed to prepare periodic two-dimensional cholesteric domains with remarkable structure and photonic properties. They are formed due to geometrical frustration. Complex optical patterns with non-trivial dependence of the images on light polarization and on observation geometry were found and investigated in transmission and reflection. The obtained photonic structures of two-dimensional ordered confocal domains and their optical properties are a challenge both for theory and experiment.