Anisotropy of Local Field and Dispersion of Refractive Indices in Uniaxial Liquid Crystals

Abstract
A method for the determination of the components Lj of the Lorentz tenzor in uniaxial liquid crystals from experimental dependences n_j(&lanbda;) of the refractive indices on the light wavelength in the visible range was proposed and realized. The method was confirmed for a number of nematics and smectic A with known components L_j obtained earlier by independent spectral methods. The precision of new method is limited by the precision of the refractometry and noticeably exceeds the precision of the spectral methods.

Keywords: liquid crystals, local field, refractometry, dispersion of the refractive indices