Related papers: Phase Transitions in Nematics: Textures with Tacto…
In this work, we study the nematic-isotropic phase transition based on the dynamics of the Landau--De Gennes theory of liquid crystals. At the critical temperature, the Landau--De Gennes bulk potential favors the isotropic phase and nematic…
Modeling and simulation studies using a high-order Landau-de Gennes type model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystal transition are presented showing the existence of meta-stable nematic pre-ordering under certain conditions, in…
Extensions of a previously presented Landau-de Gennes type liquid crystalline phase transition model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A (lamellar) a phase transition to the direct isotropic/smectic-C (tilted lamellar) transition are…
We propose an approach to a multiscale problem in the theory of thermotropic uniaxial nematics based on the method of statistical field theory. This approach enables us to relate the coefficients $A$, $B$, $C$, $L_1$ and $L_2$ of the…
Polyhedral nematics are examples of exotic orientational phases that possess a complex internal symmetry, representing highly non-trivial ways of rotational symmetry breaking, and are subject to current experimental pursuits in colloidal…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
Recent experiments report that the long looked for thermotropic biaxial nematic phase has been finally detected in some thermotropic liquid crystalline systems. Inspired by these experimental observations we concentrate on some elementary…
In liquid-crystalline elastomers, the nematic order parameter and the induced strain vary smoothly across the isotropic-nematic transition, without the expected first-order discontinuity. To investigate this smooth variation, we measure the…
An extension to a high-order model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystalline phase transition was derived to take into account thermal effects including anisotropic thermal diffusion and latent heat of phase-ordering.…
We propose Landau phenomenology for describing the phase transition from the conventional nematic into the conical helical orientationally non-uniform structure recently identified in liquid crystals formed by "banana"-shaped molecules. The…
We apply a recently developed technique to determine adapted coordinates for the sixth degree Landau-deGennes potential, in which the potential is specially simple, to analyze the possibility of a direct transition between the fully…
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…
In this paper, we derive the sharp interface model of the nematic-isotropic phase transition from the Landau-de Gennes theory by using the matched asymptotic expansion method. The model includes the evolution equation of the velocity and…
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…
In a previous paper we have discussed how the Landau potential (entering in Landau theory of phase transitions) can be simplified using the Poincar\'e normalization procedure. Here we apply this approach to the Landau-deGennes functional…
We mathematically model Smectic-A (SmA) phases with a modified Landau-de Gennes (mLdG) model. The orientational order of the SmA phase is described by a tensor-order parameter $\mathbf{Q}$, and the positional order is described by a real…
We studied the nematic isotropic phase transition by applying the functional renormalization group to the Landau-de Gennes model. We derived the flow equations for the effective potential as well as the cubic and quartic "couplings" and the…
We investigate experimentally the dynamic phase transition of a two-dimensional active nematic layer interfaced with a passive liquid crystal. Under a temperature ramp that leads to the transition of the passive liquid into a highly…
We analyze the phase behavior of lyotropic nematic liquid crystals in the self-organizing flow, viz. so called active nematics (AN). Their elastic properties are mutually caused by evolution of topological defects (for instance,…
Mixtures of nematic liquid crystals and isotropic fluids display a diverse range of phase behaviors, arising from the coupling between orientational order and concentration fluctuations. In this review, we introduce a simplified…