Singular Values, Nematic Disclinations, and Emergent Biaxiality

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to extend the nematic director to a biaxial frame using singular value decomposition, revealing new defects and degrees of freedom in nematic liquid crystals.

Contribution

It develops a novel approach to characterize biaxiality in nematic liquid crystals through singular value decomposition of the director gradient, uncovering new defects and insights.

Findings

Identification of new defects in nematic phases

Extension of uniaxial to biaxial description using SVD

Analysis of defect structures via quaternion algebra

Abstract

Both uniaxial and biaxial nematic liquid crystals are defined by orientational ordering of their building blocks. While uniaxial nematics only orient the long molecular axis, biaxial order implies local order along three axes. As the natural degree of biaxiality and the associated frame, that can be extracted from the tensorial description of the nematic order, vanishes in the uniaxial phase, we extend the nematic director to a full biaxial frame by making use of a singular value decomposition of the gradient of the director field instead. New defects and degrees of freedom are unveiled and the similarities and differences between the uniaxial and biaxial phase are analyzed by applying the algebraic rules of the quaternion group to the uniaxial phase.