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Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) have a characteristic length scale givenby the pitch of the twisted stacking of their constituent rod-like molecules.Under homeotropic anchoring conditions where the molecules prefer to orientperpendicular to an interface, cholesteric interfaces exhibit striped phaseswith stripe widths commensurate with the pitch. Conversely, planar anchoringconditions have the molecules remain in the plane of the interface so that theCLC twists perpendicular to it. Recent work [L. Tran et al. Phys. Rev. X 7,041029 (2017)] shows that varying the anchoring conditions dramaticallyrearranges the CLC stripe pattern, exchanging defects in the stripe patternwith defects in the molecular orientation of the liquid crystal molecules. Weshow with experiments and numerical simulations that the CLC stripes alsoundergo an undulation instability when we transition from homeotropic to planaranchoring conditions and vice versa. The undulation can be interpreted as atransient relaxation of the CLC resulting from a strain in the cholestericlayers due to a tilting pitch axis, with properties analogous to the classicHelfrich-Hurault instability. We focus on CLC shells in particular and showthat the spherical topology of the shell also plays an important role inshaping the undulations.

Undulation instabilities in cholesteric liquid crystals induced by anchoring transitions