Describing and determining the order of liquid crystals in the bulk and close to interfaces

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• Zannoni, C (Universit di Bologna)
• Wednesday 09 January 2013, 14:30-15:30
• Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Mustapha Amrani.

The Mathematics of Liquid Crystals

The definition and actual determination of orientational and positional order parameters plays a key role in describing the variety of molecular organizations of liquid crystals and in quantifying their changes, e.g. at phase transitions or when approaching an interface. The classical description of order in terms of a single parameter, which implicitly assumes a simple rigid and uniaxial molecular shape, has to be refined in a number of ways, e.g. to allow for biaxiality [1] or internal flexibility [2,3] or inhomogeneities in thin films [4] or nanodroplets [5]. This increased complication has become essential in view of progresses in experimental and simulation techniques, now offering an unprecedented level of detail and of possibilities of putting theories of liquid crystals and ultimately our understanding of anisotropic phases to the test. In the talk we present some examples of order and structure determinations from coarse grained [1,5] and atomistic simulations [2-4].

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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