Magnetic field controlled optical phase retardation in a hybrid nematic cell

We have studied the phase retardation of linearly polarized light in a hybrid nematic liquid crystal cell. For a certain range of directions of the applied magnetic field the phase retardation is found to change non-monotonically with the magnetic induction. The observed behaviour is described rather well by the standard Frank elastic theory. The corrections resulting from subsurface deformations, which are characteristic both for second order elasticity approach and for surface held theory, are also considered. The analysis of the experimental data suggests that the presence of distortions in the zero-field director configuration is the necessary condition for the non-monotonic phase retardation, which implies that such an experiment could be used for the detection of misalignment of the effective pretilts in a nematic cell.