Electrohydrodynamic Instability Limits of Nematics

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Abstract
A linear, two-dimensional formulation of the problem of the electrohydrodynamic instability limits of nematic liquid crystals is presented. The nematic is assumed to have negative dielectric anisotropy, homogeneous alignment, and to be excited by a square-pulsed electric field. The formulation enables one to determine, using digital computational techniques, the limiting values of the electric field for the instability and the respective spatial wavenumbers of the nematic director, at both, the conductivity and the dielectric, regimes. The method consists, essentially, in solving a system of two equations in terms of the applied electric field and the director wavenumber, so to retain, among the solutions, those giving the maximum and minimum values of the field. The program was applied to the case of the room temperature nematic N-(p-Methoxybenzylidene)-p-Butylaniline (MBBA). The results are found to be in good agreement with the known experimental facts.