Dynamics of a Liquid Crystal close to the Fréedericksz transition

We report experimental and numerical evidences that the dynamics of the director of a liquid crystal driven by an electric field close to the critical point of the Fréedericksz Transition(FT) is not described by a Landau-Ginzburg (LG) equation as it is usually done in literature. The reasons are rel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2013-11
Main Authors: Caussarieu, Aude, Petrosyan, Artyom, Ciliberto, Sergio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anchoring
Boundary conditions
Critical point
Electric fields
Freedericksz transitions
Liquid crystals
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Summary:We report experimental and numerical evidences that the dynamics of the director of a liquid crystal driven by an electric field close to the critical point of the Fréedericksz Transition(FT) is not described by a Landau-Ginzburg (LG) equation as it is usually done in literature. The reasons are related to the very crude approximations done to obtain this equation, to the finite value of the anchoring energy and to small asymmetries on boundary conditions. We also discuss the difference between the use of LG equation for the statics and the dynamics. These results are useful in all cases where FT is used as an example for other orientational transitions.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1308.4697