INTERACTION AND DYNAMICS OF DEFECTS IN CONVECTIVE ROLL PATTERNS OF ANISOTROPIC FLUIDS

We present an overview of the dynamics and interaction of defects in roll patterns of electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals (EHC). For the decay of an Eckhaus-unstable pattern we distinguish three regimes, depending on the width of the system perpendicular to the wavenumber mismatch. Motivated by recent experiments, we examine the annihilation process of defects in patterns with wavenumber near to band center, where the motion of the defects is dominated by the interaction. The comparison with the experiments shows that this process can be described even quantitatively within the framework of Ginzburg-Landau theory.