Related papers: Hysteresis and Freedericksz thresholds for twisted…
We apply the minimum energy paths (MEPs) approach to study the helix unwinding transition in chiral nematic liquid crystals. A mechanism of the transition is determined by a MEP passing through a first order saddle point on the free energy…
In this paper, a Freedericksz-like positional transition is found for a spherical micro-droplet suspended in a nematic liquid crystal cell in the presence of an external electric field. Based on the numerical calculation of elastic energy…
The multidimensional energy surface of a cholesteric liquid crystal in a planar cell is investigated as a function of spherical coordinates determining the director orientation. Minima on the energy surface correspond to the stable states…
When a chiral isotropic elastomer is brought to low temperature cholesteric phase, the nematic degree of freedom tends to order and form a helix. Due to the nemato-elastic coupling, this also leads to elastic deformation of the polymer…
We study light transmission through a homeotropically oriented nematic liquid crystal cell and solve self-consistently a nonlinear equation for the nematic director coupled to Maxwell's equations. We demonstrate that above a certain…
We theoretically investigate the threshold for the director reorientation from the homeotropic state to the hybrid homeotropic-planar state and vice versa in a cell filled with a flexoelectric nematic liquid crystal (NLC) subjected to an…
Systems involving nematic liquid crystals subjected to magnetic fields or electric fields are modeled using the Oseen-Frank macroscopic continuum theory, and general criteria are developed to assess the local stability of equilibrium…
We study helical structures in spin-spiral single crystals. In the continuum approach for the helicity potential energy the simple electronic band splits into two non-parabolic bands. For the Fermi energy greater than the splitting between…
The minimum energy path (MEP) is the most probable transition path that connects two equilibrium states of a potential energy landscape. It has been widely used to study transition mechanisms as well as transition rates in the fields of…
In this paper, based on the numerical calculation of total energy utilizing the Green's function method, we found that the external electric field applied to a microparticle-suspended nematic liquid crystal cell, if reaching a critical…
We consider helical configurations of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) sandwiched between two substrates with homogeneous director orientation favored at both confining plates. We study the CLC twist wavenumber $q$ characterizing the…
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…
We study both theoretically and experimentally switching dynamics in surface stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal cells with asymmetric boundary conditions. In these cells the bounding surfaces are treated differently to produce…
We study numerically the minimum energy path and energy barriers for dislocation nucleation in a two-dimensional atomistic model of strained epitaxial layers on a substrate with lattice misfit. Stress relaxation processes from coherent to…
Chiral nematic liquid crystals exhibit both a helical planar ground state with uniform twist and a metastable defect-rich focal conic texture, and can be switched between the two microstructures via application of transient voltage pulses.…
The energy band structure of a rotating BEC with a link in a quasi-one-dimensional torus and the role of dissipation is studied. Through this study we are able to give a microscopic interpretation of hysteresis recently observed in the…
We study the phase diagram of director structures in cholesteric liquid crystals of negative dielectric anisotropy in homeotropic cells of thickness d which is smaller than the cholesteric pitch p. The basic control parameters are the…
The fundamental mechanism of hysteresis in the quasistatic limit of multi-stable systems is associated with transitions of the system from one local minimum of the potential energy to another. In this scenario, as system parameters are…
We consider a Lebwohl-Lasher model of chiral particles confined in a planar cell (slit pore) with different boundary conditions, and solve it using mean-field theory. The phase behaviour of the system with respect to temperature and pore…
We consider director configurations of cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) cells with two plane confining substrates. Exact solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations for out-of-plane orientations of the easy axes that correspond to…