Hydrodynamics of domain growth in nematic liquid crystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nematic liquid crystals grow domains, revealing that flow-induced backflow causes anisotropic growth, with insights into defect ring dynamics using lattice Boltzmann simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a lattice Boltzmann method to simulate domain growth in nematic liquid crystals, highlighting the role of backflow in anisotropic growth and extending analysis to cylindrical domains.

Findings

Flow-induced backflow causes spatial anisotropy in domain growth.

Lattice Boltzmann approach effectively models nematic domain dynamics.

Insights into defect ring behavior during cylindrical domain growth.

Abstract

We study the growth of aligned domains in nematic liquid crystals. Results are obtained solving the Beris-Edwards equations of motion using the lattice Boltzmann approach. Spatial anisotropy in the domain growth is shown to be a consequence of the flow induced by the changing order parameter field (backflow). The generalization of the results to the growth of a cylindrical domain, which involves the dynamics of a defect ring, is discussed.