title: Role of initial conditions in the decay of spatially periodic patterns in a nematic liquid crystal.
abstract: The decay of stripe patterns in planarly aligned nematic liquid crystals has been studied experimentally and theoretically. The initial patterns have been generated by the electrohydrodynamic instability and a light diffraction technique has been used to monitor their decay. In our experiments different decay rates have been observed as a function of the pattern wave number. According to our theoretical analysis they belong to a spectrum of decay modes and are individually selected in dependence on the initial conditions. Additional insight has emerged from a refined physical optical description of the diffraction intensity. The results compare well with experiments, which include also controlled modifications of the initial conditions to assess different decay modes.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, University of Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany.
authors.forename: Werner
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Pesch
authors.forename: Lorenz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.forename: Nándor
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Eber
authors.forename: Agnes
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Buka