Solitons in liquid crystals: Recent developments

✍ Scribed by L. Lam

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 857 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0960-0779
• DOI: 10.1016/0960-0779(94)e0108-2

✦ Synopsis

Liquid crystal is a state of matter intermediate between isotropic liquid and anisotropic crystal. The mechanical and optical properties of liquid crystals are highly nonlinear. Consequently, they are naturally soliton-bearing media. After a brief general introduction, five topics in recent developments on solitons in liquid crystals are presented, namely (i) optical solitons, (ii) solitons in nematics under a rotating magnetic field, (iii) solitons in electroconvective nematics, (iv) incommensurate solitons in smectic A, and (v) the soliton model for the chevron structure in ferroelectric smectic C* and in smectic A.