Liquid crystal cells with "dirty" substrates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how random surface pinning affects liquid crystal order in cells with

Contribution

It introduces a model for liquid crystal cells with disordered substrates and analyzes surface and bulk distortions using renormalization techniques.

Findings

Surface pinning causes marginal instability of order in 3D.

Correlation functions exhibit universal logarithmic roughness.

Finite thickness effects show crossover behaviors.

Abstract

We explore liquid crystal order in a cell with a "dirty" substrate imposing a random surface pinning. Modeling such systems by a random-field xy-model with surface heterogeneity, we find that orientational order in the three-dimensional system is marginally unstable to such surface pinning. We compute the Larkin length scale, and the corresponding surface and bulk distortions. On longer scales we calculate correlation functions using the functional renormalization group and matching methods, finding a universal logarithmic and double-logarithmic roughness in two and three dimensions, respectively. For a finite thickness cell, we explore the interplay of homogeneous-heterogeneous substrate pair and detail crossovers as a function of disorder strength and cell thickness.