Convergence to line and surface energies in nematic liquid crystal colloids with external magnetic field

Abstract

We use the Landau-de Gennes energy to describe a particle immersed into nematic liquid crystals with a constant applied magnetic field. We derive a limit energy in a regime where both line and point defects are present, showing quantitatively that the close-to-minimal energy is asymptotically concentrated on lines and surfaces nearby or on the particle. We also discuss regularity of minimizers and optimality conditions for the limit energy.

arXiv comment58 pages, 7 figures. This version of the manuscript corrects a previous version where in Section 4.1, the approximation was not sharp enough to guarantee that Theorem 3.1 holds without additional multiplicative constants, and where the construction of the recovery sequence for the limsup was not precise enough. Accepted for publication in Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations