2008/06/09 by Alberto Sicilia, Jeferson J. Arenzon, Ingo Dierking +7 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.197801
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 197801 (2008) · 4 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2008/06/09 · openalex publication_date 2008/11/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We study electric field driven deracemization in an achiral liquid crystal through the formation and coarsening of chiral domains. It is proposed that deracemization in this system is a curvature-driven process. We test this prediction using the recently obtained exact result for the distribution of hull-enclosed areas in two-dimensional coarsening with nonconserved scalar order parameter dynamics [J. J. Arenzon et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 145701 (2007)]. The experimental data are in very good agreement with the theory. We thus demonstrate that deracemization in such bent-core liquid crystals belongs to the Allen-Cahn universality class, and that the exact formula, which gives us the statistics of domain sizes during coarsening, can also be used as a strict test for this dynamic universality class.