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    Visualization, coarsening, and flow dynamics of focal conic domains in simulated smectic-A liquid crystals

    Danilo B. Liarte1,2,*, Matthew Bierbaum2, Muxin Zhang2, Brian D. Leahy2, Itai Cohen2, and James P. Sethna2,†

    • 1Institute of Physics, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
    • 2Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    • *dl778@cornell.edu
    • †sethna@lassp.cornell.edu
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    Phys. Rev. E 92, 062511 – Published 21 December, 2015

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.92.062511

    Abstract

    Smectic liquid crystals vividly illustrate the subtle interplay of broken translational and orientational symmetries, by exhibiting defect structures forming geometrically perfect confocal ellipses and hyperbolas. Here, we develop and numerically implement an effective theory to study the dynamics of focal conic domains in smectic-A liquid crystals. We use the information about the smectic's structure and energy density provided by our simulations to develop several novel visualization tools for the focal conics. Our simulations accurately describe both simple and extensional shear, which we compare to experiments, and provide additional insight into the coarsening dynamics of focal conic domains.

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    Phys. Rev. E 92, 062511– Published 21 December, 2015
    • Received 30 December 2014
    • Revised 21 October 2015

    ©2015 American Physical Society

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