Uniaxial symmetry in nematic liquid crystals
Xavier Lamy
Université de Lyon, CNRS UMR 5208, Université Lyon 1, Institut Camille Jordan, 43 blvd. du 11 novembre 1918, F-69622 Villeurbanne cedex, France
Abstract
Within the Landau–de Gennes theory of liquid crystals, we study theoretically the equilibrium configurations with uniaxial symmetry. We show that the uniaxial symmetry constraint is very restrictive and can in general not be satisfied, except in very symmetric situations. For one- and two-dimensional configurations, we characterize completely the uniaxial equilibria: they must have constant director. In the three dimensional case we focus on the model problem of a spherical droplet with radial anchoring, and show that any uniaxial equilibrium must be spherically symmetric. It was known before that uniaxiality can sometimes be broken by energy minimizers. Our results shed a new light on this phenomenon: we prove here that in one or two dimensions uniaxial symmetry is always broken, unless the director is constant. Moreover, our results concern all equilibrium configurations, and not merely energy minimizers.
Cite this article
Xavier Lamy, Uniaxial symmetry in nematic liquid crystals. Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré Anal. Non Linéaire 32 (2015), no. 5, pp. 1125–1144
DOI 10.1016/J.ANIHPC.2014.05.006