Analyzing cholesteric liquid crystals' properties and their disordered helical textures

We investigate cholesteric liquid crystals and their helical textures using computational visualization tools and a finite-difference method for the director dynamics. We aim to understand what factors drive the disordered “focal conic” texture over the formation of a perfect planar helical texture. We review the properties of common liquid crystals compounds to incorporate in the simulation. Then, we analyze and systematically compare the texture formation and evolution for two different chiral nematic liquid crystals.