Reply to “Comment on ‘Optical determination of flexoelectric coefficients and surface polarization in a hybrid aligned nematic cell’ ”

Abstract

In their Comment [G. Barbero and L. R. Evangelista, Phys. Rev. E 68, 023701] on our paper [A. Mazzulla, F. Ciuchi, and J. R. Sambles, Phys. Rev. E 64, 021708 (2001)], Barbero and Evangelista conclude that the procedure followed by us to fit the reflectivity data from the half leaky guided mode technique is questionable. In the absence of a model that is able to reproduce the experimentally obtained tilt angle profiles, their argument is unsubstantiated. To further refute their arguments, we also illustrate and discuss additional experimental data (that were not shown in our paper) that strongly support our conclusions.