Coarsening dynamics in nematic liquid crystals.pdf

Physica B 178 (1992) 56-72 North-Holland PHYSICA Coarsening dynamics in nematic liquid crystals Bernard Yurke a, Andrew N. Pargellis a, Isaac Chuang b and Neil Turok c aA T T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA bmlT Research Laboratory for Electronics, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA c Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA The dynamics of symmetry breaking phase transitions and the dynamics of defect tangles generated following the symmetry breaking are of interest in a number of fields of physics ranging from condensed matter physics to particle physics and cosmology. For the case when continuous symmetries are involved, as of yet, there has been little experimental work. Here we report on our studies of the dynamics of defects generated in a sudden quench of a uniaxial nematic liquid crystal from the isotropic phase to the nematic phase. The symmetry breaking is from 0 (3 ) to D ~ . In this phase quench, stringlike defects belonging to the 7r 1 homotopy class, pointlike defects belonging to the 77 2 homotopy class, and texture defects belonging to the % homotopy class are created. Although the % defect density scales as t-l, nonscaling behavior is seen for % defects. I. Introduction Symmetry breaking phase transitions in which the symmetry of a system is spontaneously broken to some lower symmetry are of impor- tance in a number of fields of physics including condensed matter physics, particle physics, and cosmology. There has been considerable interest in the dynamics that occurs when such systems are rapidly quenched from one phase to the other. Topological defects are generated in such quenches and the dynamics of the defects (coarsening dynamics) often exhibit scaling laws. Spinodal decomposition of binary mixtures is an example of such a phase quench for which there has been considerable theoretical and ex- perimental work [1-5]. For those systems the topological defects are the domain w