Nematic phase

Nematic phase for the hard 6x1x1 ellipsoid model.

The nematic phase has orientational order, but no positional order.

Discotic nematic phase

Discotic-nematic phase for the hard 6x6x1 ellipsoid model.

Dielectric tensor

In the uniaxial nematic phase, defining the z-axis to be parallel to the nematic axis, one has

$\epsilon _{\alpha \beta }={\begin{pmatrix}\epsilon _{\bot }&0&0\\0&\epsilon _{\bot }&0\\0&0&\epsilon _{\|}\end{pmatrix}}$

The anisotropy is defined as

$\Delta \epsilon =\epsilon _{\|}-\epsilon _{\bot }$.

The response of a nematic liquid crystal to an external electric field depends on both the sign and the magnitude of $\Delta \epsilon$.

Biaxial nematic phase

1. Jorge Peláez and Mark R. Wilson "Atomistic Simulations of a Thermotropic Biaxial Liquid Crystal", Physical Review Letters 97 267801 (2006)
2. Carl McBride and Enrique Lomba "Hard biaxial ellipsoids revisited: Numerical results", Fluid Phase Equilibria 255 pp. 37-45 (2007)
3. Roberto Berardi, Luca Muccioli, and Claudio Zannoni "Field response and switching times in biaxial nematics", Journal of Chemical Physics 128 024905 (2008)
4. Roberto Berardi, Luca Muccioli, Silvia Orlandi, Matteo Ricci and Claudio Zannoni "Computer simulations of biaxial nematics", Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 20 463101 (2008)