Home
For authors
Submission status

Current
Archive
Archive (English)
   Volumes 21-40
   Volumes 1-20
   Volumes 41-62
      Volume 62
      Volume 61
      Volume 60
      Volume 59
      Volume 58
      Volume 57
      Volume 56
      Volume 55
      Volume 54
      Volume 53
      Volume 52
      Volume 51
      Volume 50
      Volume 49
      Volume 48
      Volume 47
      Volume 46
      Volume 45
      Volume 44
      Volume 43
      Volume 42
      Volume 41
Search
VOLUME 55 (1992) | ISSUE 5 | PAGE 275
Cholesteric-nematic texture transition in liquid crystals
The cholesteric-nematic phase transition which occurs in a thin layer of a liquid crystal upon a change in the pitch of the helix or the thickness of the layer is analyzed. A geometric analog of the Ritz-Galerkin variational method is proposed for calculating the energy of various textures of a liquid crystal. Contours in order-parameter space which describe the configuration of one-dimensional textures of a liquid crystal are used as trial functions. Several metastable states exist (there is a multistability). There are also regions in which the various states of a cholesteric spiral remain nearly constant (at the accuracy level of the variational method used here). The physical meaning of this result is an additional degeneracy of the system.