Abstract

A detailed and advanced analysis of the recently proposed [J. Phys. D 33 (2000) L137] method for the simple determination of thermal and thermo-optical constants in nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) is presented. A He-Ne laser induced self-phase modulation due to photothermal effects in the NLCs and the refractive index distribution transformed the incident Gaussian beam. The physical constants including anisotropic thermal conductivities, specific heat and temperature dependence of the refractive index were determined by characterizing the self-diffracted beam and using the heat-conduction analysis.