English

Phase Transitions in Nematics: Textures with Tactoids and Disclinations

Soft Condensed Matter 2019-02-19 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate that a first order isotropic-to-nematic phase transition in liquid crystals can be succesfully modeled within the generalized Landau-de Gennes theory by selecting an appropriate combination of elastic constants. The numerical simulations of the model established in this paper qualitatively reproduce the experimentally observed configurations that include interfaces and topological defects in the nematic phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.06342,
  title  = {Phase Transitions in Nematics: Textures with Tactoids and Disclinations},
  author = {Dmitry Golovaty and Young-Ki Kim and Oleg D. Lavrentovich and Michael Novack and Peter Sternberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.06342},
  year   = {2019}
}