Antipersistent behavior of defects in a lyotropic liquid crystal during annihilation

Abstract

We report on the dynamical behavior of defects of strength s = ± 1/2 in a lyotropic liquid crystal during the annihilation process. By following their positions using time resolved polarizing microscopy technique, we present statistically significant evidence that the relative velocity between defect pairs is Gaussian distributed, anti-persistent and long-range correlated. We further show that simulations of the Lebwohl-Lasher model reproduce quite well our experimental findings.

Dynamics of a ±1/2 defect pair in a confined geometry: A thin hybrid aligned nematic cell

“…The pair annihilation dynamics has been investigated. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] This paper focuses on the dynamic behavior of the pair in a diffusion process.…”

“…Therefore, the dynamics of topological defects in the ordering process has aroused the interest of many researchers and has been largely studied theoretically, numerically, and experimentally over the last few decades. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] All of these studies focused on the relationship between r(t) and t in an annihilation process, where r(t) is the relative distance between two defects in the defect pair and t is the time for the annihilation. Most previous studies have concentrated on investigation of the annihilation of an isolated defect pair.…”

“…Most previous studies have concentrated on investigation of the annihilation of an isolated defect pair. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] However, in a real system, disclinations are never isolated, but subjected to the anchoring forces coming from the substrates of the cell containing the liquid crystal. As a consequence, in a confined geometry, the substrate anchoring is expected to strongly influence the interactions between defect lines.…”