Sculpting liquid crystal skyrmions with external flows

Abstract

We investigate, using experiments and numerical simulations, the distortions and the alignment of skyrmions in the liquid crystal under external flows for a range of average flow velocities. The simulations are based on the Landau-de Gennes $Q$ tensor theory both for isolated as well as for systems with many skyrmions. We found striking flow-driven elongation of an isolated skyrmion and flow alignment of skyrmions in the many-skyrmion system, both of which are also observed in the experiments. In the simulations, particular attention was given to the dissipation rate and to the various dissipation channels for a single skyrmion under external flow. This analysis provides insight on the observed scaling regime of the elongation of isolated flowing skyrmions and revealed a surprising plastic response at very short times, which may be relevant in applications based on the alignment of soft structures such as liquid crystal skyrmions.

References in corpus (1)

• Steady-state hydrodynamic instabilities of active liquid crystals: Hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Topological transition from a hopfion to a toron via flexoelectric self-polarization in chiral liquid crystals
• Phase Separation in Mixtures of Nematic and Isotropic Fluids
• Efficient single-precision simulations of nematohydrodynamics