title: Orientational properties of nematic disclinations.
abstract: Topological defects play a pivotal role in the physics of liquid crystals and represent one of the most prominent and well studied aspects of mesophases. While in two-dimensional nematics, disclinations are traditionally treated as point-like objects, recent experimental studies on active nematics have suggested that half-strength disclinations might in fact possess a polar structure. In this article, we provide a precise definition of polarity for half-strength nematic disclinations, we introduce a simple and robust method to calculate this quantity from experimental and numerical data and we investigate how the orientational properties of half-strength disclinations affect their relaxational dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. giomi@lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.
authors.forename: Arthur J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Vromans
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Giomi