Determination of the elastic constants of nematic liquid crystals by means of the affine transformation model

Abstract

In this paper the affine connection approach will be used to calculate the elastic constants of nematic liquid crystals. Following this approach, which was originally conceived to compute the nematic viscosity coefficients, an expression for the elastic constants, without adjustable free parameters, will be formulated in terms of a temperature dependent metric, whose non‐isotropic part is proportional to the tensorial order parameter of the nematic phase. The dependence of the elastic constants on the scalar order parameter, in the geometry of the nematic molecules, and in the anisotropic part of the molecular interaction, will be determined.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Brazilian Agencies CAPES, CNPq and Fundação Araucária (PR) for financial support of this work.