title: Visualization, coarsening, and flow dynamics of focal conic domains in simulated smectic-A liquid crystals.
abstract: Smectic liquid crystals vividly illustrate the subtle interplay of broken translational and orientational symmetries, by exhibiting defect structures forming geometrically perfect confocal ellipses and hyperbolas. Here, we develop and numerically implement an effective theory to study the dynamics of focal conic domains in smectic-A liquid crystals. We use the information about the smectic's structure and energy density provided by our simulations to develop several novel visualization tools for the focal conics. Our simulations accurately describe both simple and extensional shear, which we compare to experiments, and provide additional insight into the coarsening dynamics of focal conic domains.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.|Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Danilo B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Liarte
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bierbaum
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Muxin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Brian D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Leahy
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Itai
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Sethna