Monopole-antimonopole annihilation in a nematic liquid crystal

Andrew Pargellis, Neil Turok, Bernard Yurke

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

77 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the process of monopole-antimonopole (hedgehog-antihedgehog) annihilation in nematic liquid crystals theoretically and experimentally. We show, using a mini-max argument, that there exists a stable scaling solution to the nematodynamic equations describing this phenomenon, and find the solution numerically. We study the process experimentally in the uniaxial nematic, 4-cyano-4-n-pentylbiphenyl, following a pressure jump or thermal quench. We confirm, over 3 orders of magnitude in time, the scaling-solution prediction for the pair separation D. We find D(t0-t) with =0.50.03.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1570-1573
Number of pages4
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume67
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - 1991
Externally publishedYes

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