Modulated nematic structures and chiral symmetry breaking in 2D

Abstract: We have studied the properties of biaxial particles interacting via an anisotropic pair potential, involving second rank quadrupolar and third rank octupolar coupling terms, using Monte Carlo simulation. The particles occupy the sites of a 2D square lattice and the interactions are restricted to nearest neighbours. The system exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking from an isotropic phase to a chiral modulated nematic phase, composed of ambidextrous chiral domains. When two-fold axes of quadrupolar and octupolar tensors coincide this modulated phase appears to be the ambidextrous cholesteric phase of pitch comparable with a few lattice spacings, which can be regarded as a limiting case of the nematic twist bend phase. The associated phase transition is first-order.