Related papers: Defects of liquid crystals with variable degree of…
In [AHL] Hardt, Lin and the author proved that the defect set of minimizers of the modified Ericksen energy for nematic liquid crystals consists locally of a finite union of isolated points and H\"older continuous curves with finitely many…
We consider the simplest one-constant model, put forward by J. Ericksen, for nematic liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation. The equilibrium state is described by a director field $\mathbf{n}$ and its degree of orientation $s$,…
We present a robust discretization of the Ericksen model of liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation coupled with colloidal effects and electric fields. The total energy consists of the Ericksen energy, a weak anchoring (or…
We present explicit expressions of the helicity conservation in nematic liquid crystal flows, for both the Ericksen-Leslie and Landau-de Gennes theories. This is done by using a minimal coupling argument that leads to an Euler-like equation…
We study the asymptotic behavior, when $\varepsilon\to0$, of the minimizers $\{u_\varepsilon\}_{\varepsilon>0}$ for the energy \begin{equation*} E_\varepsilon(u)=\int_{\Omega}\Big(|\nabla…
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…
The Ericksen model for nematic liquid crystals couples a director field with a scalar degree of orientation variable, and allows the formation of various defects with finite energy. We propose a simple but novel finite element approximation…
We consider minimising $p$-harmonic maps from three-dimensional domains to the real projective plane, for $1<p<2$. These maps arise as least-energy configurations in variational models for nematic liquid crystals. We show that the singular…
Unit-vector fields $\nvec$ on a convex polyhedron $P$ subject to tangent boundary conditions provide a simple model of nematic liquid crystals in prototype bistable displays. The equilibrium and metastable configurations correspond to…
The work deals with the Ericksen-Leslie model for nematic liquid crystals on the whole space, the half-space and on exterior domains with smooth boundary. The crystal orientation is described by a unit vector that is a small perturbation of…
We study uniaxial energy minimizers within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals, subject to dirichlet boundary conditions. Topological defects in such minimizers correspond to the zeros of the corresponding equilibrium…
Liquid crystal droplets are of great interest from physics and applications. Rigorous mathematical analysis is challenging as the problem involves harmonic maps (and in general the Oseen-Frank model), free interfaces and topological defects…
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…
We study the global existence of weak solutions to a multi-dimensional simplified Ericksen-Leslie system for compressible flows of nematic liquid crystals with large initial energy in a bounded domain $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N$, where N=2…
In this paper we complete the study of global minimizers of a forced, non autonomous, one dimensional, phase transition model, initiated in [8]. Motivated by the recent findings in [9], revealing new configurations of topological structures…
Motivated by a problem originating in the study of defect structures in nematic liquid crystals, we describe and study a numerical algorithm for the resolution of a Plateau-like problem. The energy contains the area of a two-dimensional…
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…
This paper outlines an energy-minimization finite-element approach to the modeling of equilibrium configurations for nematic liquid crystals in the presence of internal and external electric fields. The method targets minimization of system…
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…
We develop a novel finite element method for a phase field model of nematic liquid crystal droplets. The continuous model considers a free energy comprised of three components: the Ericksen's energy for liquid crystals, the Cahn-Hilliard…