Anomalous diffusion in the nematic phase of thin disks

Abstract

We report molecular-dynamics simulations of the anisotropic diffusion of infinitely thin platelets in the nematic phase. Our simulations are used to distinguish between the predictions of two different theories. The first theory, based on a mapping of the nematic phase of ellipsoidal particles on the hard-sphere fluid, predicts that both the longitudinal and the transverse diffusion constants decrease monotonically with increasing density. This is in stark contrast to a scaling argument which suggests that the transverse diffusion constant of platelets in the nematic phase in fact diverges with increasing density. Our simulations support the scaling argument.