Exotic defect structures in a strongly confined chiral liquid crystal

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• Fukuda, J (AIST)
• Monday 24 June 2013, 12:00-12:45
• Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Meeting Room 2.

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

The Mathematics of Liquid Crystals

We present our numerical results on the structures of a chiral nematic liquid crystal when it is confined in a thin planar cell with strong anchoring on its surfaces. We are interested in the cases where the liquid crystal exhibit a cholesteric blue phase under no confinement, and the cell thickness is of the order of or smaller than the cholesteric pitch. We show various stable exotic defect structures depending on temperature, cell thickness, and the type of anchoring. They include a hexagonal lattice of Skyrmion excitations, and a regular array of ring defects. These exotic defect structures can be regarded as a result of frustrations between bulk blue phase ordering and surface anchoring that does not allow it.

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

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