The Landau-de Gennes theory of nematic liquidcrystals: Uniaxiality versus Biaxiality
2011
We study small energy solutions within the Landau-de Gennes
theory for nematic liquid crystals, subject to Dirichlet boundary
conditions. We consider two-dimensional and three-dimensional
domains separately. In the two-dimensional case, we establish the
equivalence of the Landau-de Gennes and Ginzburg-Landau theory. In
the three-dimensional case, we give a new definition of the
defect set based on the normalized energy. In the
three-dimensional uniaxial case, we demonstrate the equivalence
between the defect set and the isotropic set and prove the
$C^{1,\alpha}$-convergence of uniaxial small energy solutions to a
limiting harmonic map, away from the defect set, for some
$0 vanishing core limit . Generalizations
for biaxial small energy solutions are also discussed, which
include physically relevant estimates for the solution and its
scalar order parameters. This work is motivated by the study of
defects in liquid crystalline systems and their applications.
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