Transition of defect patterns from 2D to 3D in liquid crystals

Abstract

Defects arise when nematic liquid crystals are under topological constraints at the boundary. Recently the study of defects has drawn a lot of attention. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between two-dimensional defects and three-dimensional defects within nematic liquid crystals confined in a shell under the Landau-de Gennes model. We use a highly accurate spectral method to numerically solve the Landau- de Gennes model to get the detailed static structures of defects. Interestingly, the solution is radial-invariant when the thickness of the shell is sufficiently small. As the shell thickness increase, the solution undergo symmetry break to reconfigure the disclination lines. We study this three-dimensional reconfiguration of disclination lines in detail under different boundary conditions. We also discuss the topological charge of defects in two- and three-dimensional spaces within the tensor model.