Transitions of viscous fingering patterns in nematic liquid crystals

Agnes Buka*, János Kertész, Tamás Vicsek

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Interfacial patterns in a Hele-Shaw cell1 with no anisotropy are disordered2, and in the limit of vanishing surface tension the viscous fingers develop into a fractal structure3,4 as a consequence of a cascade of tip splittings. By engraving a grid into the plates of the cell, Ben-Jacob et al.5 demonstrated the role of a model anisotropy in hydrodynamic systems. Here we introduce an experimental system which uses a nematic liquid crystal as the viscous fluid, so that there is anisotropy in the medium itself. We find that the effective anisotropy6 may be tuned by varying the pressure with which the low-viscosity liquid (air, in our case) enters the cell. As a result we obtain re-entrant morphological transitions between random patterns (tip splitting) and quasi-regular patterns qualitatively resembling dendritic growth (stable tips).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)424-425
Number of pages2
JournalNature
Volume323
Issue number6087
DOIs
StatePublished - 1986
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Transitions of viscous fingering patterns in nematic liquid crystals'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this