Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 121, Issue 24, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.247803
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [DMR-1609841]
- FLAMEL program [NSF DGE-1258425]
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We confine a nematic liquid crystal with homeotropic anchoring to stable toroidal droplets and study how geometry affects the equilibrium director configuration. In contrast to the case of cylindrical confinement, we find that the equilibrium state is chiral-a twisted and escaped radial director configuration. Furthermore, we find that the magnitude of the twist distortion increases as the ratio of the ring radius to the tube radius decreases; we confirm this with computer simulations of optically polarized microscopy textures. In addition, numerical calculations also indicate that the local geometry indeed affects the magnitude of the twist distortion. We further confirm this curvature-induced twisting using bent cylindrical capillaries.
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