Theory and simulation of the confined Lebwohl-Lasher model
Entity
UAM. Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia CondensadaDate
2011-04-05Citation
10.1103/PhysRevE.83.041701
Physical Review E 83.4 (2011): 041701
ISSN
1539-3755 (print); 1550-2376 (online)DOI
10.1103/PhysRevE.83.041701Funded by
Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica under Grants Nos. MAT2007-65711-C04-04, MOSAICO, FIS2007-65869-C03-01, FIS2008-05865-C02-02, FIS2010- 22047-C05-01, and FIS2010-22047-C05-04, and from the Dirección General de Universidades e Investigación de la Comunidad de Madrid under Grant No. S2009/ESP-1691 and Program MODELICO-CM. R.G.M. would like to acknowledge a research contract from Grant MOSSNOHOProject
Comunidad de Madrid. S2009/ESP-1691/MODELICOEditor's Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.041701Subjects
FísicaRights
© 2011 American Physical SocietyAbstract
We discuss the Lebwohl-Lasher model of nematic liquid crystals in a confined geometry, using Monte Carlo simulation and mean-field theory. A film of material is sandwiched between two planar, parallel plates that couple to the adjacent spins via a surface strength ϵs. We consider the cases where the favored alignments at the two walls are the same (symmetric cell) or different (asymmetric cell). In the latter case, we demonstrate the existence of a single phase transition in the slab for all values of the cell thickness. This transition has been observed before in the regime of narrow cells, where the two structures involved correspond to different arrangements of the nematic director. By studying wider cells, we show that the transition is in fact the usual isotropic-to-nematic (capillary) transition under confinement in the case of antagonistic surface forces. We show results for a wide range of values of film thickness and discuss the phenomenology using a mean-field model
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Google Scholar:Martínez-Ratón, Yuri
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Almarza, N. G.
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Velasco Caravaca, Enrique
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