Front Propagation at the Isotropic Nematic Transition Temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamic behavior of nematic liquid crystals at the isotropic-nematic transition temperature, revealing how interfaces propagate and evolve under various boundary and initial conditions in prototype geometries.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the gradient flow model for the Landau-de Gennes energy, highlighting the dynamic propagation of interfaces and the effects of boundary conditions on solutions.

Findings

Isotropic-nematic interfaces propagate according to mean curvature for small times.

Planar initial conditions maintain an isotropic core over time.

Non-planar initial conditions lead to solutions escaping into the third dimension.

Abstract

We study the gradient flow model for the Landau-de Gennes energy functional for nematic liquid crystals at the nematic-isotropic transition temperature on prototype geometries. We study the dynamic model on a three-dimensional droplet and on a disc with Dirichlet boundary conditions and different types of initial conditions. In the case of a droplet with radial boundary conditions, a large class of physically relevant initial conditions generate dynamic solutions with a well-defined isotropic-nematic interface which propagates according to mean curvature for small times. On a disc, we make a distinction between "planar" and "non-planar" initial conditions and "minimal" and "non-minimal" Dirichlet boundary conditions. Planar initial conditions generate solutions with an isotropic core for all times whereas non-planar initial conditions generate solutions which escape into the third dimension. Non-minimal boundary conditions generate solutions with boundary layers and these solutions can either have a largely ordered interior profile or an almost entirely disordered isotropic interior profile. Our examples suggest that whilst critical points of the Landau-de Gennes energy typically have highly localized disordered-ordered interfaces, the transient dynamics exhibit observable isotropic-nematic interfaces of potential experimental relevance.