Anomalous glassy relaxation near the isotropic-nematic phase transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates anomalous glassy relaxation phenomena near the isotropic-nematic transition in liquid crystals, revealing growth of pseudonematic domains and localization effects through analysis of non-Gaussian parameters.

Contribution

It uncovers the growth of pseudonematic domains and localization effects as causes of anomalous relaxation near the I-N transition, using NGP analysis.

Findings

Growth of pseudonematic domains indicated by second peak in rotational NGP.

Localization of orientational motion causes anomalous relaxation.

Second peak in translational NGP observed in supercooled binary mixture.

Abstract

Dynamical heterogeneity in a system of Gay-Berne ellipsoids near its isotropic-nematic (I-N) transition and also in an equimolar mixture of Lennard-Jones spheres and Gay-Berne ellipsoids in deeply supercooled regime is probed by the time evolution of non-Gaussian parameter (NGP). The appearance of a dominant second peak in the rotational NGP near the I-N transition signals the growth of pseudonematic domains. Surprisingly such a second peak is instead observed in the translational NGP for glassy binary mixture. Localization of orientational motion near the I-N transition is found to be responsible for the observed anomalous orientational relaxation.