English

Long-ranged order and flow alignment in sheared $p-$atic liquid crystals

Soft Condensed Matter 2022-08-17 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We formulate a hydrodynamic theory of pp-atic liquid crystals, namely two-dimensional anisotropic fluids endowed with generic pp-fold rotational symmetry. Our approach, based on an order parameter tensor that directly embodies the discrete rotational symmetry of pp-atic phases, allows us to unveil several unknown aspects of flowing pp-atics, that previous theories, characterized by O(2){\rm O(2)} rotational symmetry, could not account for. This includes the onset of long-ranged orientational order in the presence of a simple shear flow of arbitrary shear rate, as opposed to the standard quasi-long-ranged order of two-dimensional liquid crystals, and the possibility of flow alignment at large shear rates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2111.04720,
  title  = {Long-ranged order and flow alignment in sheared $p-$atic liquid crystals},
  author = {Luca Giomi and John Toner and Niladri Sarkar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.04720},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

6 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2106.11957

R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:31:10.424Z