Configuration of a Smectic A Liquid Crystal Due to an Isolated Edge Dislocation

TY - JOUR

T1 - Configuration of a Smectic A Liquid Crystal Due to an Isolated Edge Dislocation

AU - Snow, Ben

AU - Stewart, Iain

N1 - BCS wishes to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the University of Strathclyde’s Tranche 3 studentship. IWS is grateful for a visiting Professorship at the University of Strathclyde while this work was completed. Both authors give their thanks to anonymous referees for useful insights; their suggestions have contributed significantly to the clarity of the manuscript.

PY - 2017/4/5

Y1 - 2017/4/5

N2 - We discuss the static configuration of a smectic A liquid crystal subject to an edge dislocation under the assumption the the director and layer normal fields (n and a, respectively) defining the smectic arrangement are not, in general, equivalent. After constructing the energy density for the smectic, we obtain exact solutions to the equilibrium equations which result from its minimisation at quadratic order in the variables which describe the distortion, and hence a complete description of the smectic configuration across the domain of the sample. We also examine the effect of relaxing the constraint n ≡ a for different values of the constants which characterise the response of the material to distortions, and compare these results with the "classical" case considered by previous authors, in which equivalence of n and a is enforced.

AB - We discuss the static configuration of a smectic A liquid crystal subject to an edge dislocation under the assumption the the director and layer normal fields (n and a, respectively) defining the smectic arrangement are not, in general, equivalent. After constructing the energy density for the smectic, we obtain exact solutions to the equilibrium equations which result from its minimisation at quadratic order in the variables which describe the distortion, and hence a complete description of the smectic configuration across the domain of the sample. We also examine the effect of relaxing the constraint n ≡ a for different values of the constants which characterise the response of the material to distortions, and compare these results with the "classical" case considered by previous authors, in which equivalence of n and a is enforced.

KW - Journal article

U2 - 10.1088/1361-648X/aa6751

DO - 10.1088/1361-648X/aa6751

M3 - Article

C2 - 28303798

SN - 0953-8984

VL - 29

JO - Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter

JF - Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter

IS - 19

M1 - 195101

ER -