Confined labyrinthine pattern in chiral liquid crystal droplets.

Abstract

Systems that continuously inject and dissipate energy tend to self-organize, resulting in complex spatial patterns. Labyrinthine patterns are characterized by an arrangement that exhibits local order while lacking global order. We experimentally investigate the formation of confined textures in temperature-driven chiral liquid crystal droplets. The observed textures are mainly dominated by labyrinthine patterns. To describe the observed textures, we have theoretically examined the system near the winding/unwinding transition. In this region, we can use a simplified description based on an amplitude equation with inhomogeneous coefficients that account for the confinement imposed by the droplet geometry. Numerical simulations of this model show qualitative agreement with the experimental observations. Our findings offer a novel perspective on the confined textures under various geometric configurations.