Related papers: The Smectic $A$-$C$ Phase Transition in Biaxial Di…
We report combined optical birefringence and neutron scattering measurements on the liquid crystal 12CB nanoconfined in mesoporous silicon layers. This liquid crystal exhibits strong nematic-smectic coupling responsible for a discontinuous…
We demonstrate that the phase transition from columnar-hexagonal liquid crystal to hexagonal-crystalline solid falls into an unusual universality class, which in three-dimensional allows for both discontinuous transitions as well as…
Semiflexible polymers in concentrated lyotropic solution are studied within a bead-spring model by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on the emergence of a smectic A phase and its properties. We systematically vary the density of the…
The paradigm of spontaneous symmetry breaking encompasses the breaking of the rotational symmetries $O(3)$ of isotropic space to a discrete subgroup, i.e. a three-dimensional point group. The subgroups form a rich hierarchy and allow for…
Liquid crystals offer many unique opportunities to study various phase transitions with continuous symmetry in the presence of quenched random disorder (QRD). The QRD arises from the presence of porous solids in the form of a random gel…
We propose a Landau-de Gennes phenomenological model to describe the pressure induced smectic A-nematic phase transition. The pressure induced smectic A phase transitions are discussed for varying coupling between orientational and…
Extensions of a previously presented Landau-de Gennes type liquid crystalline phase transition model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A (lamellar) a phase transition to the direct isotropic/smectic-C (tilted lamellar) transition are…
We report the first observation of the smectic C--smectic I (C--I) critical point by Xray diffraction studies on a binary system. This is in confirmity with the theoretical idea of Nelson and Halperin that coupling to the molecular tilt…
The effects of dispersed aerosil nanoparticles on two of the phase transitions of the thermotropic liquid crystal material 4-n-pentylphenylthiol-4'-n-octyloxybenzoate 8barS5 have been studied using high-resolution x-ray diffraction…
We resolve the old riddle related to the critical behavior of the heat capacity near the smectic A -- hexatic second order phase transition. Experiment suggests a "large" positive specific heat critical exponent inconsistent with the…
We study incompressible systems of motile particles with alignment interactions. Unlike their compressible counterparts, in which the order-disorder (i.e., moving to static) transition, tuned by either noise or number density, is…
We show that discotics, lying deep in the columnar phase, can exhibit an x-ray scattering pattern which mimics that of a somewhat unusual smectic liquid crystal. This exotic, new glassy phase of columnar liquid crystals, which we call a…
We develop a theory of Smectic A - Smectic C phase transition with anomalously weak smectic layer contraction. We construct a phenomenological description of this transition by generalizing the Chen-Lubensky model. Using a mean-field…
A high-resolution calorimetric study has been carried out on nano-colloidal dispersions of aerosils in the liquid crystal 4-\textit{n}-pentylphenylthiol-4'-\textit{n}-octyloxybenzoate ($\bar{8}$S5) as a function of aerosil concentration and…
The effects of weak point-like disorder on periodic systems at their upper critical dimension D_c for disorder are studied. The systems studied range from simple elastic systems with D_c=4 to systems with long range interactions with D_c=2…
We report the smectic $A_F$, a new liquid crystal phase of the ferroelectric nematic realm. The smectic $A_F$ is a phase of small polar, rod-shaped molecules which form two-dimensional fluid layers spaced by approximately the mean molecular…
We examine here various aspects of the statics and dynamics of disordered elastic systems such as manifolds and periodic systems. Although these objects look very similar and indeed share some underlying physics, periodic systems constitute…
The smectic C (smC) phase represents a unique class of liquid crystal phases characterised by the layered arrangement of molecules with tilted orientations with respect to layer normals. Building upon the real-valued tensorial smectic A…
We analyse the phase transition between the Bragg Glass and the Disordered phase in the vortex lattice in type-II superconductors, both by analytical computations and experimental investigations. It is known that if the Peak Effect can be…
A general phenomenology for phase behaviour in the mixed phase of type-II superconductors with weak point pinning disorder is outlined. We propose that the ``Bragg glass'' phase generically transforms via two separate thermodynamic phase…