Nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle: Investigation of the defect structure and its stability using adaptive mesh refinement

We investigate the orientation profile and the structure of topological defects of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle using an adaptive mesh refinement scheme developed by us previously. The previous work [J. Fukuda et al., Phys. Rev. E 65, 041709 (2002)] was devoted to the investigation of the fine structure of a hyperbolic hedgehog defect that the particle accompanies and in this paper we present the equilibrium profile of the Saturn ring configuration. The radius of the Saturn ring r(d) in units of the particle radius R-0 increases weakly with the increase of xi, the ratio of the nematic coherence length to R-0. Next we discuss the energetic stability of a hedgehog and a Saturn ring. The use of adaptive mesh refinement scheme together with a tensor orientational order parameter Q(alphabeta) allows us to calculate the elastic energy of a nematic liquid crystal without any assumption of the structure and the energy of the defect core as in the previous similar studies. The reduced free energy of a nematic liquid crystal, (F) over bar = F/L1R0, with L-1 being the elastic constant, is almost independent of xi in the hedgehog configuration, while it shows a logarithmic dependence in the Saturn ring configuration. This result clearly indicates that the energetic stability of a hedgehog to a Saturn ring for a large particle is definitely attributed to the large defect energy of the Saturn ring with a large radius.