A generalized molecular theory for nematic liquid crystals formed by non-cylindrically symmetric molecules

TL;DR

This paper extends a molecular theory for nematic liquid crystals to include non-cylindrically symmetric molecules using Tsallis thermostatistics, analyzing how order parameters vary with temperature and entropy index.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized molecular field theory incorporating Tsallis statistics for nematic liquid crystals with asymmetric molecules.

Findings

Order parameters depend on temperature and entropic index.

Critical values of order parameters vary with the entropic index.

The theory provides insights into phase transition behavior.

Abstract

Many molecular theories of nematic liquid crystals consider the constituent molecules as cylindrically symmetric. In many cases, this approximation may be useful. However the molecules of real nematics have lower symmetry. Therefore a theory was developed (Mol. Phys. 30 (1975) 1345) for an ensemble of such particles based upon a general expansion of the pairwise intermolecular potential together with the molecular field approximation. In this study, we would like to handle this molecular field theory by using Tsallis thermostatistics which has been commonly used for a decade to study the physical systems. With this aim, we would like to investigate the dependence of the order parameters on temperature and would like to report the variation of the critical values of the order parameters at the transition temperature with the entropic index.