Transition of Defect Patterns from 2D to 3D in Liquid Crystals. (7th February 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Qu, Yang; Wei, Ying; Zhang, Pingwen
• Is Part Of: Communications in computational physics. Volume 21:Number 3(2017:Mar.)
• Page Start: 890
• Page End: 904
• Publication Date: 2017-02-07
• Subjects: 61.30.Jf, -- 64.70.mf; Transition of defects, -- liquid crystal, -- Landau-de Gennes model, -- spectral method; Mathematical physics -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Physics -- Data processing -- Periodicals; 530.150285
• DOI: 10.4208/cicp.OA-2016-0034
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1815-2406

Abstract

Abstract: Defects arise when nematic liquid crystals are under topological constraints at the boundary. Recently the study of defects has drawn a lot of attention because of the growing theoretical and practical significance. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between two-dimensional defects and three-dimensional defects within nematic liquid crystals confined in a shell. A highly accurate spectral method is used to solve the Landau-de Gennes model to get the detailed static structures of defects. Interestingly, the solution is radial-invariant when the thickness of the shell is sufficiently small. As the shell thickness increases, the solution undergoes symmetry break to reconfigure the disclination lines. We study this three-dimensional reconfiguration of disclination lines in detail under different boundary conditions. In particular, we find that the temperature plays an important role in deciding whether the transition between two-dimensional defects and three-dimensional defects is continuous or discontinuous for the shell with planar anchoring condition on both inner and outer surfaces. We also discuss the characterization of defects in two- and three-dimensional spaces within the tensor model.