Fig. 4

In situ polarized optical microscopy of domain reorganization in CTAT nematics. a \(\dot{\phi }\) versus t, measured during the rheo-POM experiment with 39 wt\(\%\) CTAT + water sample at 30 °C (\(d=150\ \upmu\)m, \(\sigma =2\) Pa). POM images obtained at different times b 10 s, c 1000 s, d 2000 s, e 7000 s show coarsening of domains, polarization axis, and flow direction are indicated, colors represent intensity level, scale bar has length 50 µm. f Auto-correlation (\(A({\bf{k}},t)\)) as a function of the wave vector (k) for different times, colors represent different \(A({\bf{k}},t)\) values. g We plot the largest length scale k\({}_{\max }^{-1}\) versus t; where \(A({{\bf{k}}}_{\max },t)=0.2\). h Computable information density (CID) is plotted with time; b, c, d, e markings are for the images shown above. \(A({\bf{k}},t)\) and CID for no-shear condition (\(\sigma =0\) Pa) are plotted in Supplementary Fig. 9.