The R- and H-Defects in a Cylindrical Capillary

Abstract

Having based on well-known limiting cases, we constructed the approximate solutions of equilibrium equations for nematic liquid crystals for the radial (R) and hyperbolic (H) point defects in a capillary with normal boundary conditions. On the contrary to the point of view accepted before we have to claim that because of equivalence of both directions of “escaping” along the capillary axis the bound R- and H-defects occurred instead of non-singular disclination. The comparative analysis of elastic fields of free and bound R- and H-defects has been given. It has been shown that the boundaries do not influence on topology of the elastic fields and far from the singularities the structure coincides with the structure of a non-singular disclination. It has been obtained that the difference between the energies of the R- and H-defects in the bound state is half as much as the correspondent value for the free defects.