Kinetics of phase ordering of nematic liquid crystals confined in porous media
Résumé
Employing a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model, we investigate the influence of a random field on the phase ordering kinetics of nematic liquid crystals. We find that in the scaling regime the effect of random field (slowing down the growth of nematic) dominates over initial conditions for spatial dimensionality d<=2, whereas for d>2 the random field has all its effect in the “initial-growth” regime. In this last case the mere confinement of liquid crystals is insufficient to produce slow growth of the nematic order.