Evolution of disclinations in cholesteric liquid crystals

We studied the evolution of defect lines (oily streaks) in cholesteric liquid crystals. In contrast to nematic liquid crystals, there were no interactions between the defect lines in cholesteric liquid crystals. We observed experimentally that individual open defect segments shrank with time with a linear relation, and individual defect loops shrank with time with a square root relation. We also observed that the defects in cholesteric liquid crystals were mainly interconnected loops, and the total length of the defect lines decreased with time logarithmically because of the distribution of loop size. The decay constant depended on the helical pitch of the liquid crystal and temperature.