Specific features of the spectral properties of a cholesteric liquid crystal with a resonance defective nanocomposite layer

This paper reports on studying the spectral properties of a cholesteric liquid crystal with a defective layer of a nanocomposite consisting of metallic nanoballs dispersed in a transparent matrix and characterized by an effective resonance dielectric permittivity. The transmission, reflection, and absorption spectra of waves of both circular polarizations have been calculated, and the spectral splitting of the defective mode when its frequency coincides with the resonance frequency of the nanocomposite has been studied. An essential dependence of the splitting on the nanoball concentration in the defect has been established. It has been shown that, depending on the position of the resonance frequency with respect to the boundaries of the cholesteric band gap, an additional passband appears in the transmission spectrum, which corresponds to waves of the diffracting circular polarization, or an additional band gap for waves of both circular polarizations, which are substantially modified with variations of both the incidence angle of light and the cholesteric helix pitch.