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Schlieren texture of a nematic film with surface point defects (boojums).
This picture was taken under a polarization microscope with polarizer and
analyzer crossed. From every point defect emerge four dark brushes. For
these directions the director is parallel either to the polarizer or to
the analyzer. The colors are newton colors of thin films and depend on the
thickness of the sample. Point defects can only exist in pairs. One can
see two types of boojuns with "opposite sign of topological charge";
one type with yellow and red brushes, the other kind not that colorful.
The difference in appearance is due to different core structures for these
defects of different "charge".
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