Related papers: The Smectic A to C Phase Transition in Isotropic D…
The critical behavior at the transition from uniform nematic to twist-bend modulated nematic phase is revealed and shown to be well explained by the mean field approximation. The study was performed on a group of materials that exhibit an…
The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The colloidal rods…
The ABC model is a simple diffusive one-dimensional non-equilibrium system which exhibits a phase transition. Here we show that the cumulants of the currents of particles through the system become singular near the phase transition. At the…
Previous theoretical studies of calamitic (i.e., rod-like) ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) based on an effective one-species model led to indications of a novel smectic-A phase with a layer spacing being much larger than the length of the…
We show how two important types of phase transition in large N_c gauge theory with fundamental flavours can be cast into the same classifying framework as the meson-melting phase transition. These are quantum fluctuation induced transitions…
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…
We study the effects of topological (connectivity) disorder on phase transitions. We identify a broad class of random lattices whose disorder fluctuations decay much faster with increasing length scale than those of generic random systems,…
In this article we study the phase transition phenomenon for the Ising model under the action of a non-uniform external magnetic field. We show that the Ising model on the hypercubic lattice with a summable magnetic field has a first-order…
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…
The phase behavior of the system of parallel rigid triblock copolymers is examined using the second-virial density functional theory. The triblock particle consists of two identical infinitely thin hard rods of finite lengths on the…
A phenomenological free energy model is proposed to describe the behavior of smectic liquid crystals, an intermediate phase that exhibits orientational order and layering at the molecular scale. Advantageous properties render the functional…
Ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) are anisotropic mesogenic molecules which carry charges and therefore combine properties of liquid crystals, e.g., the formation of mesophases, and of ionic liquids, such as low melting temperatures and tiny…
Phase transitions are studied in $M$-theory and $F$-theory. In $M$-theory compactification to five dimensions on a Calabi-Yau, there are topology-changing transitions similar to those seen in conformal field theory, but the non-geometrical…
In this paper we develop a theory of mesoscopic fluctuations in disordered thin superconducting films in a parallel magnetic field. At zero temperature and sufficiently strong magnetic field the system undergoes a phase transition into a…
We present a comprehensive study of phase transitions in single-field systems that relax to a non-equilibrium global steady state. The mechanism we focus on is not the so-called Stratonovich drift combined with collective effects, but is…
We present detailed systematic studies of structural transformations in thin liquid crystal films with the smectic-C to hexatic phase transition. For the first time all possible structures reported in the literature are observed for one…
The homotopy theory of topological defects in ordered media fails to completely characterize systems with broken translational symmetry. We argue that the problem can be understood in terms of the lack of rotational Goldstone modes in such…
Recent computer simulations have uncovered the striking difference between the jamming transition of spherical and non-spherical particles. While systems of spherical particles are isostatic at the jamming point, systems of nonspherical…
The quantum phase transition between two clean, non interacting topologically distinct gapped states in three dimensions is governed by a massless Dirac fermion fixed point, irrespective of the underlying symmetry class, and this…
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…