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Nematic liquid crystals exhibit configurations in which the underlying ordering changes markedly on macroscopic length scales. Such structures include topological defects in the nematic phase and tactoids within nematic-isotropic…
We study energy minimization of a continuum Landau-de Gennes energy functional for nematic liquid crystals, in three-dimensional axisymmetric domains and in a restricted class of $\mathbb{S}^1$-equivariant (i.e., axially symmetric)…
We investigate prototypical profiles of point defects in two dimensional liquid crystals within the framework of Landau-de Gennes theory. Using boundary conditions characteristic of defects of index $k/2$, we find a critical point of the…
We study nematic equilibria on rectangular domains, in a reduced two-dimensional Landau-de Gennes framework. These reduced equilibria carry over to the three-dimensional framework at a special temperature. There is one essential model…
In the first part of this paper, we will consider minimizing configurations of the Oseen-Frank energy functional $E(n, m)$ for a biaxial nematics $(n, m):\Omega\to \mathbb S^2\times \mathbb S^2$ with $n\cdot m=0$ in dimension three, and…
We investigate the structure of nematic liquid crystal thin films described by the Landau--de Gennes tensor-valued order parameter with Dirichlet boundary conditions of nonzero degree. We prove that as the elasticity constant goes to zero a…
This paper introduces a comprehensive finite element approximation framework for three-dimensional Landau-de Gennes $Q$-tensor energies for nematic liquid crystals, with a particular focus on the anisotropy of the elastic energy and the…
Using Landau-de Gennes effective theory for nematic liquid crystals we analyse the structure of rectilinear n=1/2 smooth disclination line in the case of equal elastic constants. We find that at certain temperature there is an exact…
We study tensor-valued minimizers of the Landau-de Gennes energy functional on a simply-connected planar domain $\Omega$ with non-contractible boundary data. Here the tensorial field represents the second moment of a local orientational…
Chromonic liquid crystals (CLCs) are lyotropic materials which are attracting growing interest for their adaptability to living systems. A considerable body of works has been devoted to exploring their properties and applications. In this…
The topology and the geometry of a surface play a fundamental role in determining the equilibrium configurations of thin films of liquid crystals. We propose here a theoretical analysis of a recently introduced surface Frank energy, in the…
We study the weak anchoring condition for nematic liquid crystals in the context of the Landau-De Gennes model. We restrict our attention to two dimensional samples and to nematic director fields lying in the plane, for which the Landau-De…
A theoretical analysis is presented of a nematic liquid crystal confined between substrates pat- terned with squares that promote vertical and planar alignment. Two approaches are used to eluci- date the behavior across a wide range of…
We study global minimizers of the Landau-de Gennes (LdG) energy functional for nematic liquid crystals, on arbitrary three-dimensional simply connected geometries with topologically non-trivial and physically relevant Dirichlet boundary…
We study nematic liquid crystal configurations in confined geometries within the continuum Landau--De Gennes theory. These nematic configurations are mathematically described by symmetric, traceless two-tensor fields, known as…
Liquid crystals are materials that experience an intermediate phase where the material can flow like a liquid, but the molecules maintain an orientation order. The Frank-Oseen model is a continuum model of a liquid crystal. The model…
We discuss a 3D model describing the time evolution of nematic liquid crystals in the framework of Landau-de Gennes theory, where the natural physical constraints are enforced by a singular free energy bulk potential proposed by J.M. Ball…
The classical Oseen-Frank theory of liquid crystal elasticity is based on the experimentally verified fact that there are three independent modes of distortion, each with its associated elastic constant. On the other hand, the arguably more…
We consider the Landau-de Gennes variational model for nematic liquid crystals, in three-dimensional domains. More precisely, we study the asymptotic behaviour of minimizers as the elastic constant tends to zero, under the assumption that…
Chromonic liquid crystals are lyotropic materials which are attracting growing interest for their adapatbility to living systems. To describe their elastic properties, the classical Oseen-Frank theory requires anomalously small twist…