Pattern Formation in Liquid Crystals

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction to Pattern Formation in Nonequilibrium Systems

   • Lorenz Kramer, Agnes Buka

   Pages 1-13

3. Hydrodynamics and Electrohydrodynamics of Liquid Crystals

   • Harald Pleiner, Helmut R. Brand

   Pages 15-67

4. General Mathematical Description of Pattern-Forming Instabilities

   • Werner Pesch, Lorenz Kramer

   Pages 69-90

5. Flow Instabilities in Nematics

   • E. Dubois-Violette, P. Manneville

   Pages 91-163

6. Experiments on Thermally Driven Convection

   • Guenter Ahlers

   Pages 165-220

7. Electrohydrodynamic Instabilities in Nematic Liquid Crystals

   • Lorenz Kramer, Werner Pesch

   Pages 221-255

8. Mesophase Growth

   • John Bechhoefer

   Pages 257-289

9. Viscous Fingering

   • Agnes Buka

   Pages 291-305

10. Thermal Fluctuations in Pattern Forming Instabilities

    • Martin Treiber

    Pages 307-331

11. Back Matter

    Pages 333-339

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In the last 20 years the study of nonlinear nonequilibrium phenomena in spa­ tially extended systems, with particular emphasis on pattern-forming phenomena, has been one of the very active areas in physics, exhibiting interesting ramifi­ cations into other sciences. During this time the study of the "classic" systems, like Rayleigh-Benard convection and Taylor vortex flow in simple fluids, has also been supplemented by the study of more complex systems. Here liquid crystals have played, and are still playing, a major role. One might say that liquid crystals provide just the right amount and right kind of complexity. They are full of non­ linearities and give rise to new symmetry classes, which are sometimes actually simpler to deal with qualitatively, but they still allow a quantitative description of experiments in many cases. In fact one of the attractions of the field is the close contact between experimentalists and theorists. Hydrodynamic instabilities in liquid crystals had already experienced a period of intense study in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but at that time neither the ex­ perimental and theoretical tools nor the concepts had been developed sufficiently far to address the questions that have since been found to be of particular interest. The renewed interest is also evidenced by the fact that a new series of workshops has evolved. The first one took place in 1989 in Bayreuth and united participants from almost all groups working in pattern formation in liquid crystals.

• convection
• dynamics
• material
• stability
• thermodynamics
• fluid- and aerodynamics

• Research Institute for Solid-State Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

  Agnes Buka

• Institut fur Physik, Universitat Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

  Lorenz Kramer

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