Abstract
We present the results of a bifurcation analysis of electroconvection in a planar layer of nematic liquid crystals, based on the recently introduced weak electrolyte model, which is an extension of the standard model to an electrodiffusion model with two active ion species. We show numerically that in certain regions of the space of material parameters a primary instability involving four oblique traveling rolls can occur. Near threshold the model equations are reduced to a system of normal form ODEs that admits six distinct basic wave patterns, and allows to classify the stability of these waves in terms of five nonlinear coefficients. For parameters matched to 152 and MBBA I, the stable wave patterns are traveling rolls and alternating waves. Approaches towards a refined stability analysis based on an extension of the ODE normal form to a system of globally coupled Ginzburg Landau equations are briefly discussed.
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