Title

Hydrodynamics of Polar Liquid Crystals

Author(s)/Creator(s)

William Kung, Syracuse University
M. Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse UniversityFollow
Karl Saunders, California Polytechnic State University

Document Type

Article

Date

2-2-2008

Keywords

condensed matter, soft condensed matter, statistical mechanics

Disciplines

Physics

Description/Abstract

Starting from a microscopic definition of an alignment vector proportional to the polarization, we discuss the hydrodynamics of polar liquid crystals with local

C1v-symmetry. The free energy for polar liquid crystals differs from that of nematic liquid crystals (D1h) in that it contains terms violating the n −n symmetry. First we show that these Z2-odd terms induce a general splay instability of a uniform polarized state in a range of parameters. Next we use the general Poissonbracket formalism to derive the hydrodynamic equations of the system in the polarized state. The structure of the linear hydrodynamic modes confirms the existence of the splay instability.

Additional Information

This manuscript is from arXiv.org, to discover additional information see http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0510652

Recommended Citation

arXiv:cond-mat/0510652v2

Source

harvested from arXiv.org

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.