Eur. Phys. J. E (2020) 43: 1
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2020-11927-2

Regular Article

Ground state and peculiarity of particle interactions in liquid crystal colloids

¹ Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics of the NAS of Ukraine, 03680, Kyiv, Ukraine
² Department of Physics, Chungnam National University, 305-764, Daejeon, Korea

^* e-mail: jxk97@cnu.ac.kr

Received: 26 October 2019
Accepted: 3 January 2020
Published online: 20 January 2020

Abstract

This research proposes a general approach to determine the peculiarity of the interaction between colloidal particles in different liquid crystals. The main idea of this approach is in the definition of the colloidal particle as a source of the possible deformation of the ground state of the director field distribution. The ground state imposes restrictions on possible deformations and determines the peculiarity of the interaction between colloidal particles. Based on this approach, the Coulomb-like interaction between dipole particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal and a crucial change in the character of the interaction in a smectic liquid crystal are predicted.