Metric approach for sound propagation in nematic liquid crystals

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2013 Feb;87(2):022506. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.87.022506. Epub 2013 Feb 20.

Abstract

In the eikonal approach, we describe sound propagation near topological defects of nematic liquid crystals as geodesics of a non-Euclidian manifold endowed with an effective metric tensor. The relation between the acoustics of the medium and this geometrical description is given by Fermat's principle. We calculate the ray trajectories and propose a diffraction experiment to retrieve information about the elastic constants.

MeSH terms

  • Computer Simulation
  • Liquid Crystals / chemistry*
  • Models, Chemical*
  • Models, Molecular*
  • Scattering, Radiation
  • Sound*