Masato KAWAGUCHI, Misaki TAKEI, and Masafumi YAMASHITA

Department of Physics, Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda, Chiba 278-8510, Japan

(Received July 11, 2008; Accepted January 5, 2009)

The dynamic changes in ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) molecular alignments under an applied electric field are examined by observing the formation of conoscopic figures with a time resolution of 0.1 ms. Close agreements between observed and simulated conoscopic figures under low voltage (30 V) were obtained. Under high voltage (120 V), however, the observed conoscopic figures became blurred between 0.8 ms and 1.1 ms after reversal of the electric field. The light scattering producing the blurriness occurred due to the development of fast transient molecular alignments during the switching transition above the applied voltage 70 V.

Key words: conoscopic figures, helical structure, isogyre, light scattering, azimuthal angle