Elastic interactions between topological defects in chiral nematic shells

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new theoretical model for elastic interactions of topological defects in chiral nematic shells, accurately predicting defect positions and energies, validated by experiments and applicable to various configurations.

Contribution

A novel, self-consistent model that accounts for shell non-concentricity, enabling accurate prediction of defect positions and energies in chiral nematic shells.

Findings

Successfully predicts defect positions in experimental configurations.

Provides quantitative estimates of defect line energies.

Validates model with new experimental data.

Abstract

We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able to successfully and accurately explain and predict the positions of the defects, most relevant in the context of colloidal self-assembly. We calibrate and test our model on existing experimental data, and extend it to all newly observed defects configurations in chiral nematic shells. We perform new experiments to check further and confirm the validity of the present model. Moreover, we are able to obtain quantitative estimates of the energies of $+1$ or $+3/2$ disclination lines in cholesterics, whose intricate nature was only reported recently.