Approach to Equilibrium in Nematic Liquid Crystals in Random Fields
Abstract
When a nematic liquid crystal is quenched from the isotropic phase in a random applied field the resulting textures may show a wide variety of forms. We have studied this system, which is analogous to a ferromagnet with random anisotropy, by means of Monte-Carlo simulation. The effect of the random field in locally pinning the nematic director leads to two opposing tendencies. The initial ordering is locally enhanced by the field, but this same field delays the attainment of equilibrium, since the system must now choose from among a variety of highly frustrated polydomain states. Starting from different initial configurations, we have numerically observed different long-lived metastable states for the same set of system parameters. This indicates the existence of hysteresis in the process of temperature cycling. The competition between the system's elastic energy and on-site potential energy is at the root of the creation of this multiplicity of metastable states.
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 1997
- Bibcode:
- 1997APS..MAR.D4120Y