Extended free-energy functionals for achiral and chiral ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals

TL;DR

This paper develops a Landau-type mean-field theory for achiral and chiral ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, incorporating new free-energy contributions due to inversion symmetry breaking and polarization gradients, aiding the understanding of their polar structures.

Contribution

It introduces extended free-energy functionals that include odd elastic and polarization gradient terms, advancing the theoretical description of polar nematic liquid crystals.

Findings

Inversion symmetry breaking adds new elastic and Landau terms.

Polarization gradient is crucial for ferroelectric behavior.

Competition between twist elasticity and polarity influences structure stability.

Abstract

Polar nematic liquid crystals are new classes of condensed-matter states where the inversion symmetry common to the traditional apolar nematics is broken. Establishing theoretical descriptions for the novel phase states is an urgent task. Here, we develop a Landau-type mean-field theory for both the achiral and chiral ferroelectric nematics. In the polar nematic states, the inversion symmetry breaking adds two new contributions: an additional odd elastic term (corresponding to the flexoelectricity in symmetry) to the standard Oseen-Frank free energy and an additional Landau term relating to the gradient of local polarisation. As a general necessity, the coupling between the scalar order parameter and polarisation order is further considered. In the chiral and polar nematic state, we reveal that the competition between the twist elasticity and polarity dictates effective compressive energy arising from the quasi-layer structure. The polarisation gradient is an essential term for describing the ferroelectric nature of the systems. The approaches provide theoretical foundations for testing and predicting polar structures in emerging polar liquid crystals.