Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 41: Colloids and Complex Liquids I

CPP 41.9: Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2013, 12:30–12:45, H40

Density functional theory for liquid crystals — •René Wittmann and Klaus Mecke — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Staudtstraße 7, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

Fluids of hard spherocylinders exhibit rich phase behavior including isotropic, nematic and smectic phases. The Fundamental Measure Theory for arbitrarily shaped hard particles [1] is applied to this model system within the so-called ζ-approximation.

The spatial homogeneous phases as well as perfectly aligned systems can be treated analytically. Systematically adding higher order terms improves upon the original ζ-correction but remains computationally inefficient for inhomogeneous phases.

We present new results for the phase behavior, the isotropic-nematic interface and the Frank elastic coefficients for the nematic phase. A qualitative comparision with Monte-Carlo simulations confirms the DFT results and for the isotropic-nematic transition we recover the exact Onsager-limit.

[1] H. Hansen-Goos and K. Mecke, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 018302 (2009).