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Updated: Jul 26, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Phase ordering in nematic liquid crystals
C Denniston1, E Orlandini, J M Yeomans
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Abstract:
We study the kinetics of the nematic-isotropic transition in a two-dimensional liquid crystal by using a lattice Boltzmann scheme that couples the tensor order parameter and the flow consistently. Unlike in previous studies, we find that the time dependences of the correlation function, energy density, and number of topological defects obey dynamic scaling laws with growth exponents that, within the numerical uncertainties, agree with the value 1/2 expected from simple dimensional analysis. We find that these values are not altered by the hydrodynamic flow. In addition, by examining shallow quenches, we find that the presence of orientational disorder can inhibit amplitude ordering.
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