Singularities in nematics: The effect of elastic constant variations

Abstract

In this paper we report typical calculations of the variations in the deformation energy, interaction energy and orientational pattern of + 1, - 1, +½ and -½ singularities in the neighbourhood of a nematic-smectic transition in CBOOA. We find the interaction between +½ and -½ singularities to increase much more rapidly than that between + 1 and - 1 as the smectic point is reached, indicating that the former have a greater probability of annihilating each other near the transition.