Compressed Exponential Relaxation as Superposition of Dual Structure in Pattern Dynamics of Nematic Liquid Crystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex relaxation dynamics in soft-mode turbulence of nematic liquid crystals, revealing a superposition of dual structures that lead to compressed exponential relaxation, supported by experimental power spectra analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis linking the superposition of dual modal structures to compressed exponential relaxation in nematic liquid crystal turbulence.

Findings

Net relaxation follows a compressed exponential function.

Modal relaxation exhibits a dual structure with a crossover.

Power spectra analysis supports the superposition model.

Abstract

Soft-mode turbulence (SMT) is the spatiotemporal chaos observed in homeotropically aligned nematic liquid crystals, where non-thermal fluctuations are induced by nonlinear coupling between the Nambu-Goldstone and convective modes. The net and modal relaxations of the disorder pattern dynamics in SMT have been studied to construct the statistical physics of nonlinear nonequilibrium systems. The net relaxation dynamics is well-described by a compressed exponential function and the modal one satisfies a dual structure, dynamic crossover accompanied by a breaking of time-reversal invariance. Because the net relaxation is described by a weighted mean of the modal ones with respect to the wave number, the compressed-exponential behavior emerges as a superposition of the dual structure. Here, we present experimental results of the power spectra to discuss the compressed-exponential behavior and the dual structure from a viewpoint of the harmonic analysis. We also derive a relationship of the power spectra from the evolution equation of the modal autocorrelation function. The formula will be helpful to study non-thermal fluctuations in experiments such as the scattering methods.