Related papers: The Smectic $A$-$C$ Phase Transition in Biaxial Di…
The liquid crystalline compound, forming the glass of the smectic C$_A$* phase, is investigated by the X-ray diffraction in the 18-298 K range. The characteristic distances within the smectic C$_A$* phase are determined. The electron…
We explore the phase behavior and structure of orthogonal smectic liquid crystals consisting of bent-core molecules (BCMs) by means of Monte Carlo molecular simulations. A simple athermal molecular model is introduced that describes the…
We show that a smectic in a disordered medium (e.g., aerogel) exhibits anomalous elasticity, with the compression modulus B(k) vanishing and the bend modulus K(k) diverging as k --> 0. In addition, the effective disorder develops long…
We have studied the effects of quenched random disorder created by dispersed aerosil nanoparticle gels on the nematic to smectic-A (N-SmA) and smectic-A to reentrant nematic (SmA- RN) phase transitions of thermotropic liquid crystal…
A review is given on the theory of vortex-glass phases in impure type-II superconductors in an external field. We begin with a brief discussion of the effects of thermal fluctuations on the spontaneously broken U(1) and translation…
Recent studies have shown that one-dimensional driven systems can exhibit phase separation even if the dynamics is governed by local rules. The ABC model, which comprises three particle species that diffuse asymmetrically around a ring,…
We point out that the smectic-nematic phase transition may considered as a transition of a stack of membranes in $2+\epsilon$ dimensions, in which the layers become so wrinkled that they interpenetrate each other are no longer…
We study a model of two-dimensional interacting monomers which has two symmetric absorbing states and exhibits two kinds of phase transition; one is an order-disorder transition and the other is an absorbing phase transition. Our focus is…
Comprehensive x-ray scattering studies have characterized the smectic ordering of octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) confined in the hydrogen-bonded silica gels formed by aerosil dispersions. For all densities of aerosil and all measurement…
We show that a generalized Landau theory for the smectic A and C phases exhibits a biaxiality induced AC tricritical point. Proximity to this tricritical point depends on the degree of orientational order in the system; for sufficiently…
Under an electric field, chiral smectic liquid crystals transit usually to the unwound SmC* phase where the helical structure is completely unrolled. Sometimes the sample transits initially towards an intermediate polar state before the…
This analysis of the electroclinic effect in ferroelectric liquid crystals with a first order Smectic-$A^*$--Smectic-$C^*$ (Sm-$A^*$--Sm-$C^*$) transition, shows they can be either Type I or Type II. In temperature--field parameter space…
The destruction of quasi-long range crystalline order as a consequence of strong disorder effects is shown to accompany the strict localization of all classical plasma modes of one-dimensional Wigner crystals at T=0. We construct a phase…
We consider systems whose steady-states exhibit a nonequilibrium phase transition from an active state to one -among an infinite number- absorbing state, as some control parameter is varied across a threshold value. The pair contact…
Order-disorder transitions between glassy phases are quite common in nature and yet a comprehensive survey of the microscopic structural changes remains elusive since the scale of the constituents is tiny and in most cases few of them take…
The persistent problem posed by the glass transition is to develop a general atomic level description of a solidification process that is not associated with any change in the symmetry of the atomic structure. The answer proposed in this…
Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling analysis have been carried out to study the critical behavior and universality for the isotropic-nematic phase transition in a system of long straight rigid rods of length $k$ ($k$-mers) on…
We numerically investigate two-dimensional systems of hard rectangles at constant pressure through extensive hard-particle Monte Carlo simulations. We determine the complete phase diagram as a function of packing fraction and aspect ratio,…
Modeling and simulation studies using a high-order Landau-de Gennes type model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystal transition are presented showing the existence of meta-stable nematic pre-ordering under certain conditions, in…
We consider the shear flow of well-aligned one-component smectic phases, such as thermotropic smectics and lamellar diblock copolymers, below the critical region. We show that, as a result of thermal fluctuations of the layers, parallel…