We analyze the molecular dynamics heterogeneity of the liquid crystal 4-n-octyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl nanoconfined in porous silicon. We show that the temperature dependence of the dynamic correlation length ?wall, which measures the distance over which a memory of the interfacial slowing down of the molecular dynamics persists, is closely related to the growth of the short-range static order arising from quenched random fields. More generally, this result may also shed some light on the connection between static and dynamic heterogeneities in a wide class of condensed and soft matter systems.
@article{arxiv.0911.5330,
title = {Relation between static short-range order and dynamic heterogeneities in a nanoconfined liquid crystal},
author = {Ronan Lefort and Denis Morineau and Régis Guégan and Mohammed Guendouz and Jean-Marc Zanotti and Bernhard Frick},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.5330},
year = {2009}
}