Nonperturbative Renormalization Group for the Landau-de Gennes Model

Abstract

We studied the nematic isotropic phase transition by applying the functional renormalization group to the Landau-de Gennes model. We derived the flow equations for the effective potential as well as the cubic and quartic "couplings" and the anomalous dimension. We then solved the coupled flow equations on a grid using Newton Raphson method. A first order phase transition is observed. We also investigated the nematic isotropic puzzle (the NI puzzle) in this paper. We obtained the NI transition temperature difference ${T_c-T^*}=5.85K$ with sizable improvement over previous results.

8 pages, 8 figures in Revtex