Experimental Study of the Coarsening Dynamics of +1 and -1 Disclinations

Abstract

Dynamics of interactive disclinations in a nematic liquid crystal cell, which can be regarded as the two-dimensional XY-system, has been investigated. We made numerous wedge disclinations of the strength ±1 and observed the annihilation process by means of a polarizing microscope. By analyzing the image, it is found that the number of disclinations N ( t ) decreases as N ( t )∼ t -1 and the dynamical scaling law holds. Furthermore, the correlation function obtained by experiments is discussed by applying the theory of the two-dimensional XY-model.