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Reversal of Helicoidal Twist Handedness Near Point Defects of Confined Chiral Liquid Crystals | | P. J. Ackerman
; I. I. Smalyukh
; | | Date: |
22 Apr 2017 | | Abstract: | Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly
assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the
chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of
the ground-state helicoidal configuration often arise due to the effects of
confinement and external fields. We directly probe the twist directionality of
liquid crystal director structures through experimental three-dimensional
imaging and numerical minimization of the elastic free energy and show that
spatially localized regions of handedness opposite to that of the chiral liquid
crystal ground state can arise in the proximity of twisted-soliton-bound
topological point defects. In chiral nematic liquid crystal confined to a film
that has a thickness less than the cholesteric pitch and perpendicular surface
boundary conditions, twisted solitonic structures embedded in a uniform unwound
far-field background with chirality-matched handedness locally relieve
confinement-imposed frustration and tend to be accompanied by point defects and
smaller geometry-required energetically costly regions of opposite twist
handedness. We also describe a new spatially localized structure, dubbed a
"twistion", in which a twisted solitonic three-dimensional director
configuration is accompanied by four point defects. We discuss how our findings
may impinge on the stability of localized particle-like director field
configurations in chiral and non-chiral liquid crystals. | | Source: | arXiv, 1704.7363 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
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