Hydrodynamics of Defects in the Abelian–Higgs Model: An Application to Nematic Liquid Crystals
✍ Scribed by Günter Kurz; Sarben Sarkar
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 205 KB
- Volume
- 282
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0003-4916
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✦ Synopsis
The Abelian Higgs model is the basis for a gauge covariant form of the distortion free energy for nematic liquid crystals. This is used to derive a new form of the Ericksen Leslie equations incorporating the dynamics of disclinations in nematic films. The zero liquid flow case is treated in detail for simplicity. The equations are reduced to dynamic equations for disclination points in moduli space for a small deviation from the Bogomol'nyi limit. We are able to derive analytically the dynamics of disclinations with winding numbers of the same sign. A set of such disclinations close to one another, i.e., with overlapping cores, can result from the disintegration of a larger disclination, and they repel one another. For a pair of such disclinations far apart from one another we find that they move on a straight line where their separation increases logarithmically over time.