Abstract

 The first generation of theories and computer simulations of liquid crystals have made drastic and often contrasting assumptions on the model representation of constituent mesogens and on the type of intermolecular interactions (e.g purely attractive in Maier-Saupe type and purely hard repulsive in Onsager models). Computer simulations of liquid crystals, that started with simple lattice models, have upgraded over the years to off-lattice models where molecules are replaced by relatively simple objects endowed with purely steric or attractive and repulsive type interactions of various softness and, more recently, to very realistic fully atomistic models. In the talk we shall briefly summarize the main features of these models and show various examples for the prediction of liquid crystal phase behavior starting from microscopic models. The contribution of different interactions to the phase morphologies obtained as well as open problems will be discussed.