Coupling between Smectic and Twist Modes in Polymer Intercalated Smectics
Abstract
We analyse the elastic energy of an intercalated smectic where orientationally ordered polymers with an average orientation varying from layer to layer are intercalated between smectic planes. The lowest order terms in the coupling between polymer director and smectic layer curvature are added to the smectic elastic energy. Integration over the smectic degrees of freedom leaves an effective polymer twist energy that has to be included into the total polymer elastic energy leading to a fluctuational renormalization of the intercalated polymer twist modulus. If the polymers are chiral this in its turn leads to a renormalization of the cholesteric pitch.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9706189,
title = {Coupling between Smectic and Twist Modes in Polymer Intercalated Smectics},
author = {R. Podgornik and B. Žekš},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9706189},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 1 fig in ps available from [email protected] Replaced version also contains title and abstract in the main text