1 research outputs found
Biaxial nematic order in fundamental measure theory
Liquid crystals consisting of biaxial particles can exhibit a much richer
phase behavior than their uniaxial counterparts. Usually, one has to rely on
simulation results to understand the phase diagram of these systems, since very
few analytical results exist. In this work, we apply fundamental measure
theory, which allows to derive free energy functionals for hard particles from
first principles and with quantitative accuracy, to systems of hard cylinders,
cones and spherotriangles. We provide a general recipe for incorporating
biaxial liquid crystal order parameters into fundamental measure theory and use
this framework to obtain the phase boundaries for the emergence of
orientational order in the considered systems. Our results provide insights
into the phase behavior of biaxial nematic liquid crystals, and in particular
into methods for their analytical investigation