Paradoxes for Chromonic Liquid Crystal Droplets

TL;DR

This paper reveals paradoxes in modeling chromonic liquid crystal droplets, showing that violating classical inequalities leads to unphysical behaviors like droplet disintegration, challenging existing elastic theories.

Contribution

It demonstrates that classical elastic models for chromonic liquid crystals produce paradoxes when certain inequalities are violated, highlighting the need for revised theories.

Findings

Droplets disintegrate into smaller tactoids under certain conditions.

Violating Ericksen inequalities leads to unphysical predictions.

Classical models may be insufficient for chromonic liquid crystals.

Abstract

Chromonic liquid crystals constitute a novel lyotropic phase, whose elastic properties have so far been modeled within the classical Oseen-Frank theory, provided that the twist constant is assumed to be considerably smaller than the saddle-splay constant, in violation of one Ericksen inequality. This paper shows that paradoxical consequences follow from such a violation for droplets of these materials surrounded by an isotropic fluid. For example, tactoids with a degenerate planar anchoring simply disintegrate indefinitely in myriads of smaller ones.