Colloid-wall interaction in a nematic liquid crystal: The mirror-image method of colloidal nematostatics

Abstract

The new area of nematic colloidal systems (or nematic emulsions) has been greatly guided by the fruitful analogy between the colloidal nematostatics and electrostatics. The elastic charge density representation of the colloidal nematostatics [V. M. Pergamenshchik and V. O. Uzunova, Eur. Phys. J. E 23, 161 (2007); Phys. Rev. E 76, 011707 (2007)] develops this analogy at the level of charge density and Coulomb interaction. It shows, however, that the colloidal nematostatics in three dimensions substantially differs from the electrostatics both in its mathematical structure and physical implications: the elastic charge and multipoles are dyads; similar charges attract while opposite charges repel each other, and so on. In this paper we consider the interaction between an elastic charge and elastic dipole with a nematic surface (wall) at which the director alignment is fixed. Using the mirror image method of electrostatics as a guiding idea, we develop the mirror image method in the nematostatics for arbitrary director tilt at the wall. A wall is shown to induce a repulsive 1/R-4 force on the elastic dipole which, in general, is accompanied by its reorientation. External torque on the colloid induces an elastic charge therein and triggers switching to the 1/R-2 repulsion. The dyadic nature of an elastic dipole is shown to be essential: a particle-wall interaction potential cannot be obtained in phenomenological theories with a single component dipole. In the introductory sections we discuss connection between the director-mediated interaction in two and three dimensions and the electrostatic interaction and consider different symmetries of elastic dipoles. Conservation of the torque components exerted upon colloids is shown to play the role of Gauss' theorem and determines the elastic charge dyad.