Speaker:
Date of Talk:
02/15/13
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics; University of California, Santa Cruz
Title:
Questions on Liquid crystals
Abstract
The flows of nematic liquid crystals can be treated as slow moving particles where the fluid velocity and the alignment of the particles influence each other. The hydrodynamic theory of liquid crystals was established by Ericksenand Leslie in the 1960’s.
As Leslie points out in his 1968 paper : “liquid crystals are states of matter which are capable of flow, and in which the molecular arrangements give rise to a preferred direction”. In this lecture I will discuss regularity and uniqueness results for solutions of systems of nematic liquid crystals (LCD) with non constant density. I will also discuss the asymptotic behavior of solutions with constant density, showing that the solutions decay at an algebraic rate.
