Flexo-electricity of the dowser texture

POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007688 ,PTDC/CTM-BIO/6178/2014 and M-ERA-NET2/0007/2016 (CellColor).The persistent quasi-planar nematic texture known also as the dowser texture is characterized by a 2D unitary vector field d. We show here that the dowser texture is sensitive, in first order, to electric fields. This property is due to the flexo-electric polarisation P collinear with d expected from R. B. Meyer's considerations on flexo-electricity in nematics. It is pointed out that due to the flexo-electric polarisation nematic monopoles can be manipulated by electric fields of appropriate geometry.publishe