2007/12/18 by David Allender, D. W. Allender, Lech Longa · 1 citation
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Geometry #Landau theory #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Liquid crystal #Liquid crystalline #Material Dynamics and Properties #Mathematics #Phase (matter) #Phase diagram #Phase transition #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Reentrancy #Tensor (intrinsic definition) #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermotropic crystal #Tricritical point #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.78.011704
published as Phys. Rev. E78, 011704 (2008) · 12 pages, 14 figures
arxiv created 2007/12/18 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recent experiments report that the long-looked-for thermotropic biaxial nematic phase has been finally detected in some thermotropic liquid crystalline systems. Inspired by these experimental observations, we concentrate on some elementary theoretical issues concerned with the classical sixth-order Landau-de Gennes free energy expansion in terms of the symmetric and traceless tensor order parameter Q alpha beta. In particular, we fully explore the stability of the biaxial nematic phase giving analytical solutions for all distinct classes of the phase diagrams that theory allows. This includes diagrams with triple, critical, and tricritical points and with multiple (reentrant) biaxial and uniaxial phase transitions. A brief comparison with predictions of existing molecular theories is also given.