Hysteresis in Two-Dimensional Liquid Crystal Models

Figure 2

The mean field effective energy per site   versus   for different values of and , , symmetric solutions. (a) ; full line: obtained for the “up” part of the single loop hysteresis cycle; dashed line: obtained for the “down” part of the cycle. Note that the physically sensible regime of   is restricted to the interval . (b) ; full line: obtained for the “up” part of the double loop hysteresis cycle; dashed line: obtained for the “down” part of the cycle.

(a)

(b)