Nematics with quenched disorder : violation of self-averaging
Statistical Mechanics
2015-05-19 v1
Abstract
We consider the isotropic-to-nematic transition in liquid crystals confined to aerogel hosts, and assume that the aerogel acts as a random field. We generally find that self-averaging is violated. For a bulk transition that is weakly first-order, the violation of self-averaging is so severe, even the correlation length becomes non-self-averaging: no phase transition remains in this case. For a bulk transition that is more strongly first-order, the violation of self-averaging is milder, and a phase transition is observed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1009.0512,
title = {Nematics with quenched disorder : violation of self-averaging},
author = {J. M. Fish and R. L. C. Vink},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1009.0512},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett