20.500.12556/DKUM-91658 Annihilation of highly-charged topological defects We studied numerically external stimuli enforced annihilation of a pair of daughter nematic topological defect (TD) assemblies bearing a relatively strong topological charge |m|=3/2. A Landau- de Gennes phenomenological approach in terms of tensor nematic order parameter was used in an effectively two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, where spatial variations along the z-axis were neglected. A pair of {m=3/2,m=−3/2} was enforced by an appropriate surface anchoring field, mimicking an experimental sample realization using the atomic force microscope (AFM) scribing method. Furthermore, defects were confined within a rectangular boundary that imposes strong tangential anchoring. This setup enabled complex and counter-intuitive annihilation processes on varying relevant parameters. We present two qualitatively different annihilation paths, where we either gradually reduced the relative surface anchoring field importance or increased an external in-plane spatially homogeneous electric field E. The creation and depinning of additional defect pairs {12,−12} mediated the annihilation in such a geometry. Furthermore, we illustrate the absorption of TDs by sharp edges of the confining boundary, accompanied by m=±1/4↔∓1/4 winding reversal of edge singularities, and also E-driven zero-dimensional to one-dimensional defect core transformation. liquid crystals topological defects annihilation order reconstruction tekoči kristali topološki defekti anihilacija rekonstrukcija reda true false true MDPI Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Znanstveno delo 2025-01-24 10:27:35 2025-01-24 10:38:08 2025-01-25 03:11:16 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2020 0 0 Str. 1-13 št. 8, št. članka 673 Letn. 10 Aug. 2020 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 2020-06-24 2020-08-01 2020-08-03 532.783 27325443 10.3390/cryst10080673 2073-4352 Klemencic-2020-Annihilation_of_Highly-Charged.pdf Klemencic-2020-Annihilation_of_Highly-Charged.pdf 1 97738A8D98365C01D17F42C43C8E5914 464900d7f94850ae4b2aa71e995066d74178fdff14fbee5bd17e30290ac2c7a0 cf0e2296-da36-11ef-9445-00155d000105 https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=188120 https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst10080673 0 d643ac37-da36-11ef-9445-00155d000105 https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=188121 Fakulteta za naravoslovje in matematiko 0 0 0