Abstract
This chapter provides an introduction to coarsening (or phaseordering) dynamics in nematic liquid crystals, the process by which a nematic reaches equilibrium after a quench from the isotropic to the nematic phase. With a rapid quench to the nematic phase a large number of topological defects are formed and dominate the subsequent equilibration process. The equilibration process is characterized by the presence of dynamical scaling of the domain structure and its associated measures, such as the structure factor and order parameter correlation function. To illustrate these general ideas we discuss the results of a molecular dynamics simulation of the Gay Berne model of liquid crystals after such quench in a system with 65536 molecules. Twist disclination lines as well as type-1 lines and monopoles were observed. Evidence of dynamical scaling was found in the behavior of the spatial correlation function and the density of disclination lines. However, the behavior of the structure factor provides a more sensitive measure of scaling, and we observed a crossover from a defect dominated regime at small values of the wavevector to a thermal fluctuation dominated regime at large wavevector.
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Pelcovits, R.A., Billeter, J.L., Smondyrev, A.M., Loriot, G.B. (2001). Topological Defect Behavior in a Quenched Nematic Liquid Crystal. In: Lavrentovich, O.D., Pasini, P., Zannoni, C., Žumer, S. (eds) Defects in Liquid Crystals: Computer Simulations, Theory and Experiments. NATO Science Series, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0512-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0512-8_6
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