Strong anchoring boundary conditions in nematic liquid crystals: Higher-order corrections to the Oseen-Frank limit and a revised small-domain theory

TL;DR

This paper revisits strong anchoring boundary conditions in nematic liquid crystals, explicitly including surface energy effects, and derives higher-order corrections to the classical Oseen-Frank limit, leading to more accurate defect and boundary behavior predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a refined analysis of anchoring effects by retaining surface energy, providing higher-order corrections and a more physical boundary condition treatment in nematic liquid crystal models.

Findings

Surface anchoring causes an $O(1/ ext{ep})$ correction to the director field.

Mixed boundary conditions yield smoother defect cores than Dirichlet conditions.

Numerical simulations show significant differences in defect morphology with different boundary treatments.

Abstract

Strong anchoring boundary conditions are conventionally modelled by imposing Dirichlet conditions on the order parameter in Landau-de Gennes theory, neglecting the finite surface energy of realistic anchoring. This work revisits the strong anchoring limit for nematic liquid crystals in confined two-dimensional domains. By explicitly retaining a Rapini-Papoular surface energy and adopting a scaling where the extrapolation length $l_{ex}$ is comparable to the coherence length $\xi$, we analyse both the small-domain ($\ep = h/\xi\to 0$; $h$ is the domain size) and Oseen-Frank $(\ep \to \infty$) asymptotic regimes. In the small-domain limit, the leading-order equilibrium solution is given by the average of the boundary data, which can vanish in symmetrically frustrated geometries, leading to isotropic melting. In the large-domain limit, matched asymptotic expansions reveal that surface anchoring introduces an $O(1/\ep)$ correction to the director field, in contrast to the $O(1/\ep^2)$ correction predicted by Dirichlet conditions. The analysis captures the detailed structure of interior and boundary defects, showing that mixed (Robin-type) boundary conditions yield smoother defect cores and more physical predictions than rigid Dirichlet conditions. Numerical solutions for square and circular wells with tangential anchoring illustrate the differences between the two boundary condition treatments, particularly in defect morphology. These results demonstrate that a consistent treatment of anchoring energetics, together with stability considerations, is essential for accurate modelling of nematic equilibria in micro- and nano-scale confined geometries.