Optical Microscopy Observations and Construction of Dupin Cyclides at the Isotropic/Smectic A Phase Transition

Mikhael Halaby Macary , Gauthier Damême (1) , Antoine Gibek , Valentin Dubuffet , Benoît Dupuy , Justin Picart , Roll Freddy Dimeni , Claire Meyer (1)

1 PSC - Physique des Systèmes Complexes - UR UPJV 4663

In this work, we are interested in the nucleation of bâtonnets at the Isotropic/Smectic A phase transition of 10CB liquid crystal. Very often, these bâtonnets are decorated with a large number of focal conics. We present here an example of a bâtonnet obtained by optical crossed polarized microscopy in a frequently observed particular area of the sample. This bâtonnet presents bulges and one of them consists of a tessellation of ellipses. These ellipses are two by two tangent, one to each other, and their confocal hyperbolas merge at the apex of the bâtonnet. We propose a numerical simulation with Python software to reproduce this tiling of ellipses as well as the shape of the smectic layers taking the well-known shape of Dupin cyclides within this particular bâtonnet area.

Domaines: Physique [physics]

Mikhael Halaby Macary, Gauthier Damême, Antoine Gibek, Valentin Dubuffet, Benoît Dupuy, et al.. Optical Microscopy Observations and Construction of Dupin Cyclides at the Isotropic/Smectic A Phase Transition. Materials, 2021, 14 (16), pp.4539. ⟨10.3390/ma14164539⟩. ⟨hal-03623322⟩