title: Metric approach for sound propagation in nematic liquid crystals.
abstract: In the eikonal approach, we describe sound propagation near topological defects of nematic liquid crystals as geodesics of a non-Euclidian manifold endowed with an effective metric tensor. The relation between the acoustics of the medium and this geometrical description is given by Fermat's principle. We calculate the ray trajectories and propose a diffraction experiment to retrieve information about the elastic constants.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Campus A. C. Simões, 57072-900 Maceió, AL, Brazil. erms@fis.ufal.br
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fumeron
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Moraes
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D050866:Liquid Crystals / Q000737:chemistry*; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D013016:Sound