A good and computationally efficient polynomial approximation to the Maier–Saupe nematic free energy

• Autores: Soulé, Ezequiel Rodolfo; Rey, Alejandro D.
• Año de publicación: 2011
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: Liquid Crystal; Phase Transition; Maier–Saupe Theory; Landau–De Gennes Theory
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

A new computational strategy is proposed to approximate, with a simple but accurate expression, the Maier–Saupe free energy for nematic order. Instead of the traditional approach of expanding the free energy with a truncated Taylor series, we employ a least-squares fitting to obtain the coefficients of a polynomial expression. Both methods are compared, and the fitting with at most five polynomial terms is shown to provide a satisfactory fitting, and to give much more accurate results than the traditional Taylor expansion. We perform the analysis in terms of the tensor order parameter, so the results are valid in uniaxial and biaxial states.
Fil: Soulé, Ezequiel Rodolfo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales (i); Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina
Fil: Rey, Alejandro D.. McGill University; Canadá