9th Italian-Japanese Workshop on Liquid Crystals and 13th National SICL Meeting

The light scattering by localized quasi planar excitations in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals, also known as spherulites, is quantitatively described, evaluating the cross section of the axis-rotation for polarized light, taking into account the anisotropic optical properties of the medium and the peculiar shape of the excitations. We give first a simplified analytical description of the spherulite. We evaluate the above mentioned scattering cross-sections in the Born approximation, by using both the analytical results and, for comparison, the numerical solution. The effects of changing the intensity of the driving external static electric (or magnetic) field is also considered. Furthermore, possible applications of the phenomenon are envisaged.