Geodesic Pathways through the Potential Energy Landscape of Liquid Crystal Formers

In this work, we explore the inherent dynamics of liquid crystal formers using geodesic theory. We locate geodesics (shortest paths) through the potential energy landscape ensembles of the isotropic liquid and nematic liquid crystal phases of a liquid crystal forming system. One expects that the differences in properties of these paths between the liquid and liquid crystal phases will yield insight into how molecular motion differs between these phases. What is found is that, while it yields results for the isotropic liquid phase which are consistent with previous studies on linear (diatomic) molecules [1],[2], the current formulation of geodesic theory for linear molecules does not correctly capture the inherent dynamics of liquid crystals, and a modification of the current theory is necessary in order to describe these dynamics.