Papers
Topics
Authors
Recent
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Gemini 2.5 Flash
173 tokens/sec
GPT-4o
7 tokens/sec
Gemini 2.5 Pro Pro
46 tokens/sec
o3 Pro
4 tokens/sec
GPT-4.1 Pro
38 tokens/sec
DeepSeek R1 via Azure Pro
28 tokens/sec
2000 character limit reached

Spontaneous electric-polarization topology in confined ferroelectric nematics (2211.04692v1)

Published 9 Nov 2022 in cond-mat.soft and cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Abstract: Topological spin and polar textures have fascinated people in different areas of physics and technologies. However, the observations are limited in magnetic and solid-state ferroelectric systems. Ferroelectric nematic is the first liquid-state ferroelectric that would carry many possibilities of spatially distributed polarization fields. Contrary to traditional magnetic or crystalline systems, anisotropic liquid crystal interactions can compete with the polarization counterparts, thereby setting a challenge in understating their interplays and the resultant topologies. Here, we discover chiral polarization meron-like structures during the emergence and growth of quasi-2D ferroelectric nematic domains, which are visualized by fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy and second harmonic generation microscopies. Such micrometre-scale polarization textures are the modified electric variants of the magnetic merons. Unlike the conventional liquid crystal textures driven solely by the elasticity, the polarization field puts additional topological constraints, e.g., head-to-tail asymmetry, to the systems and results in a variety of previously unidentified polar topological patterns. The chirality can emerge spontaneously in polar textures and can be additionally biased by introducing chiral dopants. An extended mean-field modelling for the ferroelectric nematics reveals that the polarization strength of systems plays a dedicated role in determining polarization topology, providing a guide for exploring diverse polar textures in strongly-polarized liquid crystals.

Citations (24)

Summary

We haven't generated a summary for this paper yet.