Symmetry of uniaxial global Landau-de Gennes minimizers in the theory of nematic liquid crystals

Abstract

We study uniaxial energy-minimizers within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals on a three-dimensional spherical droplet subject to homeotropic boundary conditions. We work in the low-temperature regime and show that uniaxial energy-minimizers necessarily have the structure of the well-studied radial-hedgehog solution in the low-temperature limit. An immediate consequence of this result is that Landau-de Gennes energy minimizers cannot be purely uniaxial for sufficiently low temperatures.