Dynamic Cubic Instability in a 2D Q-tensor Model for Liquid Crystals
Abstract
We consider a four-elastic-constant Landau-de Gennes energy characterizing nematic liquid crystal configurations described using the Q-tensor formalism. The energy contains a cubic term and is unbounded from below. We study dynamical effects produced by the presence of this cubic term by considering an L2 gradient flow generated by this energy. We work in two dimensions and concentrate on understanding the relations between the physicality of the initial data and the global well-posedness of the system.
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