Dynamics of smectic elastomers
Abstract
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of liquid crystal elastomers, crosslinked in the smectic- phase, in their smectic-, biaxial smectic and smectic- phases. Two different yet related formulations are employed. One formulation describes the pure hydrodynamics and does not explicitly involve the Frank director, which relaxes to its local equilibrium value in a non-hydrodynamic time. The other formulation explicitly treats the director and applies beyond the hydrodynamic limit. We compare the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of smectic- elastomers to that of nematics and show that the two are closely related. For the biaxial smectic and the smectic- phases, we calculate sound velocities and the mode structure in certain symmetry directions. For the smectic- elastomers, in addition, we discuss in some detail their possible behavior in rheology experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0611425,
title = {Dynamics of smectic elastomers},
author = {Olaf Stenull and T. C. Lubensky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0611425},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
19 pages, 3 figures