Singular Contact Geometry and Beltrami Fields in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals

Abstract

The description of point defects in chiral liquid crystals via topological methods requires the introduction of singular contact structures, a generalisation of regular contact structures where the plane field may have singularities at isolated points. We characterise the class of singularities that may arise in such structures, as well as the subclass of singularities that can occur in a Beltrami field. We discuss questions of global existence, and prove that all singular contact structures with nonremovable singularities are overtwisted. To connect the theory to experiment we also discuss normal and tangential boundary conditions for singular contact structures, and show we can realise all desired boundary conditions except for normal anchoring on a sphere, where a theorem of Eliashberg and Thurston provides an obstruction to having a singular contact structure in the interior. By introducing a singular version of the Lutz twist we show that all contact structures are homotopic within the larger class of singular contact structures. We give applications of our results to the description of topological defects in chiral liquid crystals.