title: Superellipsoid-based, real symmetric traceless tensor glyphs motivated by nematic liquid crystal alignment visualization.
abstract: A glyph-based method for visualizing the nematic liquid crystal alignment tensor is introduced. Unlike previous approaches, the glyph is based upon physically-linked metrics, not offsets of the eigenvalues. These metrics, combined with a set of superellipsoid shapes, communicate both the strength of the crystal's uniaxial alignment and the amount of biaxiality. With small modifications, our approach can visualize any real symmetric traceless tensor.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, James Worth Bagley College of Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA. tjk@acm.org
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Jankun-Kelly
authors.forename: Ketan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mehta