LIGHT-TRANSMISSION STUDY OF COARSENING IN A NEMATIC LIQUID-CRYSTAL

We have used light transmission to follow for four decades in time the annealing of defects generated by pressure jumps in a uniaxial liquid crystal. Two distinct scaling regimes for the light intensity as a function of time were observed: an early-time regime in which light propagates diffusively to the detector, and a late-time regime in which unscattered light dominates the signal reaching the detector. The measured values for the scaling exponent nu for the string density rho(s) is-proportional-to t(-nu) are within 10% of the expected value nu = 1 over the time interval 10 msec < t < 100 sec.