Ground States of Nematic Tori with radial boundary conditions

We report ground states of radially anchored nematic tori. For strong anchoring conditions we observe the often reported escape radial configuration. However, as the aspect ratio of the torus is lowered the escape configuration evolves to a new structure where the additional splay on the liquid crystal imposed by the geometry of the torus is released as bend. At lower anchoring condition the ground state corresponds to a two $+$1/2 line defect wrapping the torus. However, as the aspect ratio is lowered we again observed a new ground state where a single line wraps the torus twice. We perform Jones calculus simulations to confirm that our director ansatz reflects the experimental findings.