Physical Properties of Liquid Crystals: II. Transport and Elastic Properties

Transport properties of matter express the manner in which a current of certain quantity originates due to imposed gradient of another conjugate quantity. In other words, any phenomenon involving the movement of various entities, such as mass, momentum or energy, through a medium, fluid or solid by virtue of non-equilibrium conditions that create gradient of conjugate quantities within the medium is known as transport phenomenon. The existence of concentration, velocity and temperature gradients in a medium lead to the relative motion (or transport) of chemical species, momentum and heat energy, respectively, in the quest of achieving equilibrium.