Quantitative Analysis and Simulation for Cholesteric Fingers.

Abstract

When a cholesteric liquid crystal is sandwiched between two plates with homeotropic anchoring, cholesteric fingers are obserbed in presence of an electric field. By changing two parameters, namely the sample thickness and the electric field magnitude, we can characterize different type solutions. We have computed molecular configurations of cholesteric fingers from the equation of motion derived from the Frank elastic free energy density.