TY - JOUR
T1 - Bogomol’nyi, Prasad, and Sommerfield Configurations in Smectics
AU - Santangelo, C. D.
AU - Kamien, Randall D.
PY - 2003/7/25
Y1 - 2003/7/25
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.045506
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.045506
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:17544398565
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 91
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
IS - 4
ER -