We focus on understanding the influence of the two-component coupling in ferronematics, a colloidal suspension of magnetic nanoparticles in nematic liquid crystals. Using coarse-grained Landau-de Gennes free energies, we study the ordering dynamics of this complex fluid and present a range of analytical and numerical results. Our main observations are: (i) slaved coarsening for quench temperatures T intermediate to the critical temperatures of the uncoupled components, (ii) slower growth similar to the Lifshitz-Slyozov law (L∼t1/3) for symmetric magneto-nematic coupling, (iii) sub-domain morphologies dominated by interfacial defects for asymmetric coupling strengths. These novel results will serve to guide future experiments on this technologically important system.
@article{arxiv.1909.05835,
title = {Slaved Coarsening in Ferronematics},
author = {Aditya Vats and Varsha Banerjee and Sanjay Puri},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.05835},
year = {2020}
}