Fluctuation-induced interactions in nematics with disordered anchoring energy
arXiv:1407.1382 · doi:10.1088/0953-8984/26/50/505101
Abstract
We examine fluctuation-induced (pseudo-Casimir) interactions in nematic liquid-crystalline films confined between two surfaces, where one of the surfaces imposes a strong homeotropic anchoring (ensuring a uniform mean director profile), while the other one is assumed to be a chemically disordered substrate exhibiting an annealed, random distribution of anchoring energies. We employ a saddle-point approximation to evaluate the free energy of interaction mediated between the two surfaces and investigate how the interaction force is influenced by the presence of disordered surface anchoring energy. It is shown that the disorder results in a renormalization of the effective surface anchoring parameter in a way that it leads to quantitative and qualitative changes (including a change of sign at intermediate inter-surface separations) in the pseudo-Casimir interaction force when compared with the interaction force in the absence of disorder.
arXiv comment7 pages, 3 figures
References in corpus (15)
- The `Friction' of Vacuum, and other Fluctuation-Induced Forces
- Nematic-Isotropic Transition with Quenched Disorder
- Fluctuation-Induced Interaction between Randomly Charged Dielectrics
- Quenched Charge Disorder and Coulomb Interactions
- Electrostatic Disorder-Induced Interactions in Inhomogeneous Dielectrics
- Partially Annealed Disorder and Collapse of Like-Charged Macroions
- Non-monotoic fluctuation-induced interactions between dielectric slabs carrying charge disorder
- The effects of dielectric disorder on van der Waals interactions in slab geometries
- Lateral and normal forces between patterned substrates induced by nematic fluctuations
- Thermal Casimir effect between random layered dielectrics
- Liquid crystal cells with "dirty" substrates
- Sample-to-sample fluctuations of electrostatic forces generated by quenched charge disorder
- Electromagnetic fluctuation-induced interactions in randomly charged slabs
- Stability and distortions of liquid crystal order in a cell with a heterogeneous substrate
- Pseudo-Casimir force in confined nematic polymers