Detalhes bibliográficos
| Autor(a) principal: |
Costa, Fernando Pestana da |
| Data de Publicação: |
2009 |
| Outros Autores: |
Gartland Jr, Eugene C.,
Grinfeld, Michael,
Pinto, João Teixeira |
| Tipo de documento: |
Artigo
|
| Idioma: |
eng |
| Título da fonte: |
Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
| Texto Completo: |
http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/1467
|
Resumo: |
Motivated by a recent investigation of Millar and McKay [Director orientation of a twisted nematic under the influence of an in-plane magnetic field. Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst 435, 277/[937]–286/[946] (2005)], we study the magnetic field twist-Fréedericksz transition for a nematic liquid crystal of positive diamagnetic anisotropy with strong anchoring and pre-twist boundary conditions. Despite the pre-twist, the system still possesses z_2 symmetry and a symmetry- breaking pitchfork bifurcation, which occurs at a critical magnetic-field strength that, as we prove, is above the threshold for the classical twist-Fréedericksz transition (which has no pre-twist). It was observed numerically by Millar and McKay that this instability occurs precisely at the point at which the ground-state solution loses its monotonicity (with respect to the position coordinate across the cell gap). We explain this surprising observation using a rigorous phase-space analysis. |