Saddle-splay screening and chiral symmetry breaking in toroidal nematics
Saddle-splay screening and chiral symmetry breaking in toroidal nematics
We present a theoretical study of director fields in toroidal geometries with degenerate planar boundary conditions. We find spontaneous chirality: despite the achiral nature of nematics the director configuration shows a handedness if the toroid is thick enough. In the chiral state the director field displays a double twist, whereas …