Smectic-glass transition in a liquid crystal cell with a "dirty" substrate
Soft Condensed Matter
2012-06-14 v2 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Abstract
We explore the smectic liquid crystal order in a cell with a "dirty" substrate imposing random pinnings. Within harmonic elasticity we find a subtle three-dimensional surface disorder-driven transition into a pinned smectic-glass, controlled by a three-dimensional Cardy-Ostlund-like fixed line, akin to a super-rough phase of a two-dimensional xy model. We compute the associated random substrate-driven distortions of the smectic-glass state, identify the characteristic length scales on the heterogeneous substrate and in the bulk, and discuss a variety of experimental signatures.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1112.3296,
title = {Smectic-glass transition in a liquid crystal cell with a "dirty" substrate},
author = {Quan Zhang and Leo Radzihovsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.3296},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures, published in Europhysics Letters, with minor typos corrected