Effect of Disclination Lines on Free Energy of Nematic Liquid Crystals |
| |
| Authors: | YANG Guo-Hong ZHANG Hui TIAN Li-Jun WANG Yu-Sheng DUAN Yi-Shi |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Physics, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200436, China;2. Department of Chemistry, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200436, China;3. Institute of Theoretical Physics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China |
| |
| Abstract: | ![]()
In the light of Ф-mapping method and topological current theory, the effect of disclination lines on the free energy density of nematic liquid crystals is studied. It is pointed out that the total Frank free energydensity can be divided into two parts. One is the distorted energydensity of director field around the disclination lines. The otheris the saddle-splay energy density, which is shown to becentralized at the disclination lines and to be topologicallyquantized in the unit of kπ/2 when the Jacobian determinant of the director field does not vanish at thesingularities of the director field. The topological quantumnumbers are determined by the Hopf indices and Brouwer degrees ofthe director field at the disclination lines, i.e., the disclination strengthes. When the Jacobian determinant vanishes,the generation, annihilation, intersection, splitting and mergingprocesses of the saddle-splay energy density are detailed in theneighborhoods of the limit points and bifurcation points,respectively. It is shown that the disclination line with hightopological quantum number is unstable and will evolve to the lowtopological quantum number states through the splitting process. |
| |
| Keywords: | director field disclination line free energy saddle-splay bifurcation |
| 本文献已被 维普 等数据库收录！ |
| 点击此处可从《理论物理通讯》浏览原始摘要信息 |
|
点击此处可从《理论物理通讯》下载全文 |
|
