Theory of elastic interaction between axially symmetric 3D skyrmions in confined chiral nematic liquid crystals and in skyrmion bags

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical theory describing the elastic interactions of 3D skyrmions in confined chiral nematic liquid crystals, including multipole expansion, interaction potentials, and skyrmion bag configurations, with experimental validation.

Contribution

The paper provides the first exact analytical solutions for the far field director configuration and interaction potential of 3D skyrmions in confined nematic liquid crystals, incorporating multipole moments and skyrmion bag expansion.

Findings

Exact analytical expressions for skyrmion far field and interaction potential.

Multipole coefficients of small skyrmions can be approximately recovered from experiments.

The skyrmion bag expansion matches experimental observations.

Abstract

We study axially symmetrical 3D skyrmionic particles (torons, hopfions) in a thin homeotropic cell filled with a cholesteric liquid crystal. In this case, the contribution of the chirality term on far distances becomes small and a 3D skyrmion can be described as a very specific particle in nematic with multipole moments of different chiralities. We show that small skyrmions asymptotically can be presented as a particle with six multipole moments. Thus, we find the exact analytical solution for the far field director configuration around the 3D skyrmion and the exact analytical expression for the elastic interaction potential between 3D skyrmions in a homeotropic cell with thickness $L$. The comparison with the experiment allows us to recover approximately multipole coefficients of one small 3D skyrmion. We also describe the expansion of the skyrmion bag analytically depending on the number $N$ of anti-skyrmions in it and obtain an agreement with the experiment. Along the way, we determined the director field around a chiral axially symmetric colloidal particle in the unlimited nematic liquid crystal and in the confined homeotropic cell, taking into account higher order elastic terms with orders $l=1\div 6$. We also have found the elastic interaction potential between such particles.