Optimal Control for Optical Solitons in Nematic Liquid Crystals

Abstract

We study an optimal control problem for a coupled Schrödinger-elliptic evolution system that describes the propagation of a laser beam in nematic liquid crystals. We consider a bilinear control related to an electric field depending on the optical axis acting on the sample. This problem arises from the study of an optimal way to transform the input signal into a target signal by modifying a system parameter related to the bias electric field. We prove well-posedness, existence, and first-order necessary conditions for an optimal solution.