2003/03/31 by Christian D. Santangelo, C. D. Santangelo, Randall D. Kamien · 5 citations
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Differential Geometry Research #Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #cond-mat.soft #math-ph #math.MP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.045506
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 (2003) 045506 · 4 pages, RevTeX, 2 figures, corrected typos
arxiv created 2003/07/21 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/25 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is typical in smectic liquid crystals to describe elastic deformations with a linear theory when the elastic strain is small. In smectics, certain essential nonlinearities arise from the requirement of rotational invariance. By employing the Bogomol'nyi, Prasad, and Sommerfield decomposition and relying on boundary conditions and geometric invariants, we have found a large class of exact solutions. We introduce an approximation for the deformation profile far from a spherical inclusion and find an enhanced attractive interaction at long distances due to the nonlinear elasticity, confirmed by numerical minimization.