Tomoyuki Nagaya, Hiroshi Orihara and Yoshihiro Ishibashi
Synthetic Crystal Research Laboratory, School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-01, Japan
(Received May 7, 1993; Accepted June 4, 1993)
Keywords: topological defects, disclinations, liquid crystals, pattern formation, defect dynamics
Abstract. Dynamics of topological defects in liquid crystals is investigated. We made disclinations in the two-dimensionally aligned nematics and observed the annihilation process in them. The motions of a pair of disclinations of the opposite sign are analyzed by introducing the equation of motion. The interaction between the disclinations is discussed. By adopting the image processing technique, we obtained the statistical quantities that characterize the coarsening process of a number of disclinations and found that the dynamical scaling law holds in this system. In addition, the spatial distribution of the disclinations is investigated with the spatial correlation function of the position of disclinations.