Disclination dynamics in nematic liquid crystals

Spinodal decomposition and nematic coarsening in a rigid-rod solution

“…Other studies used similar models to analyze the annihilation dynamics of defect pairs [14,15]. These studies rely on either continuum models of the director field evolution [11,14] or on liquid-crystal hydrodynamic models for the orientation tensor evolution based on phenomenological free-energy expressions [13,15,16].…”

Reorientational dynamics of conjugated nematic point defects

“…Notwithstanding this limitation, the drifting equilibrium approximation is capable of capturing the essence of defect dynamics even when an explicit solution to the complete balance equation of torques is not available. In the notable case of the motion of a straight disclination of arbitrary topological charge, the general analytic solution to the complete balance equation of torques was obtained by Denniston [13].…”

Field-Induced Motion of Nematic Disclinations

“…After a certain period of time these defects amalgamate and thus annihilate each other. The two cores disappear at once, with a large and rapid reduction in free-energy [13,15,26]. Imagine, however, that we apply a magnetic field that favours the director orientation of the molecules that lie within the defects.…”

“…Now the defects move, slowly, to reduce their elastic energy. For example, attraction between two point defects of opposite charges has been studied both in planar [13,14,15] and cylindrical [16,17,18] geometries. The attraction between a dipole of smectic disclinations has been studied in [19].…”