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We present a general theory of liquid crystals under inhomogeneous electric field in a Ginzburg-Landau scheme. The molecular orientation can be deformed by electric field when the dielectric tensor is orientation-dependent. We then…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-11-11 Lionel Foret , Akira Onuki

This paper outlines an energy-minimization finite-element approach to the computational modeling of equilibrium configurations for nematic liquid crystals under free elastic effects. The method targets minimization of the system free energy…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2014-02-17 J. H. Adler , T. J. Atherton , D. B. Emerson , S. P. MacLachlan

This paper is concerned with the rigorous analysis of a recently proposed model of Zheng et. al. for describing nematic liquid crystals within the dense regime, with the orientation distribution function as the variable. A key feature of…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2017-03-01 Jamie M. Taylor

Numerical simulations based on radial basis functions have been developed for systems with complex geometries and have been successfully applied across various fields, including seismology, coastal hydrodynamics, and biology. However,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-17 Jin-Sheng Wu , Ivan I. Smalyukh

In this article, we study minimization of the Landau-de Gennes energy for liquid crystal elastomer.The total energy, is of the sum of the Lagrangian elastic stored energy function of the elastomer and the Eulerian Landau-de Gennes energy of…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2013-12-12 M. Carme Calderer , Carlos A. Garavito Garzon , Baisheng Yan

Toroidal nematics are nematic liquid crystals confined within a circular torus and subject to planar degenerate anchoring on the boundary of the torus. They may be droplets floating in an isotropic environment or cavities carved out of a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-04-12 Andrea Pedrini , Epifanio G. Virga

In nematic liquid crystals (NLCs), topological defects of a chiral origin play a role in phase transitions and lead to phase configurations of nontrivial topology, like those in neutron stars and helium in the A-phase. In the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-10-10 L. V. Elnikova

There is considerable interest in understanding and controlling topological defects in nematic liquid crystals (LCs). Confinement, in the form of droplets, has been particularly effective in that regard. Here, we employ the Landau-de Gennes…

Monte Carlo simulation, experiment and continuum theory are used to examine the anchoring exhibited by a nematic liquid crystal at a patterned substrate comprising a periodic array of rectangles that, respectively, promote vertical and…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2013-08-09 Candy Anquetil-Deck , Douglas J. Cleaver , Jonathan P. Bramble , Timothy J. Atherton

We study a variational model for ferronematics in two-dimensional domains, in the "super-dilute" regime. The free energy functional consists of a reduced Landau-de Gennes energy for the nematic order parameter, a Ginzburg-Landau type energy…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2023-08-08 Giacomo Canevari , Apala Majumdar , Bianca Stroffolini , Yiwei Wang

Uniaxial nematic liquid crystals whose molecular orientation is subjected to a tangential anchoring on a curved surface offer a non trivial interplay between the geometry and the topology of the surface and the orientational degree of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-12-19 Michael Nestler , Ingo Nitschke , Hartmut Löwen , Axel Voigt

We use density--functional theory to study the structure of two-dimensional defects inside a circular nematic nanocavity. The density, nematic order parameter, and director fields, as well as the defect core energy and core radius, are…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2010-12-17 D. de las Heras , L. Mederos , E. Velasco

We consider the relationship between three continuum liquid crystal theories: Oseen-Frank, Ericksen and Landau-de Gennes. It is known that the function space is an important part of the mathematical model and by considering various function…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2015-09-30 S. J. Bedford

The emergence of nematic order on deformable closed surfaces plays a pivotal role in the morphogenesis of active biological matter, such as the regeneration of Hydra. In this work, we present a continuum model that couples the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-10 Gaetano Napoli , Silvia Paparini

We propose an efficient numerical scheme, based on the method of lines, for solving the Landau-de Gennes equations describing the relaxational dynamics of nematic liquid crystals. Our method is computationally easy to implement, balancing…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-11-13 A. K. Bhattacharjee , Gautam I. Menon , R. Adhikari

We develop a Q-tensor model of nematic liquid crystals occupying a stationary surface which represents a fluidic material film in space. In addition to the evolution due to Landau--de\,Gennes energy the model includes a tangent viscous…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2023-10-06 Lucas Bouck , Ricardo H. Nochetto , Vladimir Yushutin

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-05-01 Cody D. Schimming , Jorge Viñals

A nematic liquid crystal confined to the surface of a sphere exhibits topological defects of total charge $+2$ due to the topological constraint. In equilibrium, the nematic field forms four $+1/2$ defects, located at the corners of a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-07-22 Yi-Heng Zhang , Markus Deserno , Zhan-Chun Tu

Substrates which are chemically or topographically patterned induce a variety of liquid crystal textures. The response of the liquid crystal to competing surface orientations, typical of patterned substrates, is determined by the anisotropy…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-12-21 Nuno M. Silvestre , Jose M. Romero-Enrique , Margarida M. Telo da Gama

We use nematic Multi-particle Collision Dynamics (N-MPCD) simulations to study confined nematic liquid crystals in square domains, with three distinct mean-field potentials: the classical Maier-Saupe and Marrucci-Greco models, and a more…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-26 Humberto Híjar , Apala Majumdar