Biaxiality in the Landau-de Gennes model for liquid crystals.

Relatore:  Giacomo Canevari - Universite' Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris
  martedì 25 marzo 2014 alle ore 17.00 16:45 rinfresco; 17:00 inizio seminario

 Nematic liquid crystals are a special phase of matter, somehow intermediate between solid crystals and liquids. Several variational models have been proposed to describe their behaviour. In this talk we focus on the Landau de Gennes model, in a 2-D stationary case. We show that, in the low temperature range, the stable equilibrium configurations are biaxial - that is, the molecules align locally along more preferred directions, at some point. Next, we discuss the asymptotic behavior o f minimizers, as the elastic constant tends to zero, and prove the convergence to a locally harmonic map with singularities.


Luogo
Ca' Vignal 2, Piano 1°, Aula L

Referente
Sisto Baldo

Referente esterno
Data pubblicazione
17 febbraio 2014

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