Computer simulation of the pulse-periodic electric field effect on the 2D director orientation of nematic liquid crystal. Experimental research of multimode nematic liquid crystal waveguides.

Abstract

In this paper, we numerically investigate a two-dimensional differential equation describing the motion of a director of a nematic liquid crystal for the case of an alternating external electric field. The presence of the previously discovered accumulation effect has been confirmed by numerical modeling. A comparison is made with the case of a constant electric field, and also a qualitative comparison with an experiment is given. Incomplete agreement with experimental data indicates the need for further research. However, it should be noted that the constructed mathematical model of the phenomenon allows at this stage to obtain estimates that are sufficiently acceptable for experiment and correctly predict the dynamics of processes in liquid crystals. An analysis of the features of the propagation of quasi-waveguide modes in a liquid crystal waveguide showed that, in the case of dynamic processes, such effects as power exchange between coupled modes, leakage of modes, re-emission of modes into modes of a different order, etc., can be observed. The programs for numerical solution and computer modeling of two-dimensional parabolic partial differential equation were developed both in FORTRAN and C/C++. The results obtained are important for further investigation of dynamic processes inside non-stationary liquid crystal layers, both from a theoretical point of view for understanding kinetic processes in liquid crystals and from a practical point of view when organizing and conducting different experimental research.