Photonic Dipole Contours of Ferrofluid Hele-Shaw Cell

Abstract

This investigation describes and demonstrates a novel technique for the visualization of magnetic fields. Two ferrofluid Hele-Shaw cells have been constructed to facilitate the imaging of magnetic field lines. We deduce that magnetically induced photonic band gap arrays similar to electrostatic liquid crystal operation are responsible for the photographed images and seek to mathematically prove the images are of dipole nature. A simple way of explaining this work is to think of the old magnetic iron filling experiments; but now each iron filling is a molecule floating in a liquid. Each molecule has the freedom to act as an independent lens that can be aligned by an external magnetic field. Because each lens directs light, the external field can be analyzed by following the light paths captured in the photographs.