Nematic phase

Nematic phase for the hard 6x1x1 ellipsoid model.

The nematic phase has orientational order, but no positional order.

Dielectric tensor

In the uniaxial nematic phase, defining the z-axis to be parallel to the nematic axis, one has

$\epsilon _{\alpha \beta }={\begin{pmatrix}\epsilon _{\bot }&0&0\\0&\epsilon _{\bot }&0\\0&0&\epsilon _{\|}\end{pmatrix}}$

The anisotropy is defined as

Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \Delta \epsilon = \epsilon_\| - \epsilon_\bot } .

The response of a nematic liquid crystal to an external electric field depends on both the sign and the magnitude of Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \Delta \epsilon} .