Metric approach for sound propagation in nematic liquid crystals

Abstract

In the eikonal approach, we describe sound propagation near to topological defects of nematic liquid crystal as geodesics of a non-euclidian manifold endowed with an effective metric tensor. The relation between the acoustics of the medium and this geometrical description is given by Fermat's principle. We calculate the ray trajectories and propose a diffraction experiment to retrieve informations about the elastic constants.

6 pages, 4 figures, accepted in Physical Review E