Related papers: Low-temperature structural study of smectic C$_A$*…
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,…
We present a rigorous mathematical analysis of a modified Landau-de Gennes (LdG) theory modeling temperature-driven phase transitions between cholesteric, helical smectic, and smectic C* phases. This model couples a tensor-valued order…
The existence of a static lengthscale that grows in accordance with the dramatic slowing down observed at the glass transition is a subject of intense interest. A recent publication compared two proposals for this length scale, one based on…
The low temperature properties of glass are distinct from those of crystals due to the presence of poorly understood low-energy excitations. The tunneling model proposes that these are atoms tunneling between nearby equilibria, forming…
X-ray diffraction experiments were performed on polycrystalline and single-crystal specimens of Ce$_{2}$Fe$_{17}$ at temperatures between 10 K and 300 K. Below $T_{\mathrm{t}}$ = 118$\pm$2 K, additional weak superstructure reflections were…
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of liquid crystal elastomers, crosslinked in the smectic-$A$ phase, in their smectic-$A$, biaxial smectic and smectic-$C$ phases. Two different yet related formulations are employed. One…
The discovery of the ferroelectric nematic phase has brought with it a plethora of new polar liquid crystalline phases. One in particular is the anti-ferroelectric smectic A SmA\textsubscript{AF} phase. In this letter we show via…
Many bent-core nematic liquid crystals exhibit unusual physical properties due to the presence of smectic clusters, known as "cybotactic" clusters in the nematic phase. Effect of these clusters on complex shear modulus ($G^*(\omega)$) of…
Smectic liquid crystals are materials formed by stacking deformable, fluid layers. Though smectics prefer to have flat, uniformly-spaced layers, boundary conditions can impose curvature on the layers. Since the layer spacing and curvature…
Quantitative density measurements from electron scattering show that shear bands in deformed Al_{88}Y_{7}Fe_{5} metallic glass exhibit alternating high and low density regions, ranging from -9 % to +6 % relative to the un-deformed matrix.…
Glass-forming liquids have only a modest tendency to crystallize and hence their dynamics can be studied even below the melting temperature. The relaxation dynamics of most of these liquids shows at a temperature $T_c$, somewhat above the…
X-ray photon correlation is used to probe the slow dynamics of the glass-former B2O3 across the glass transition. In the undercooled liquid phase the decay times of the measured correlation functions are consistent with visible light…
Glass forming liquids exhibit structural relaxation behaviors, reflecting underlying atomic rearrangements on a wide range of timescales. These behaviors play a crucial role in determining many material properties. However, the relaxation…
Using computer simulations, we studied the diffusion and structural relaxation in equilibrium smectic liquid crystal bulk phases of parallel hard spherocylinders. These systems exhibit a non-Gaussian layer-to-layer diffusion due to the…
Recently we have formulated theory of bi-layer-dimerized chiral liquid antiferroelectric crystals. The spontaneous polarization has been increased owing to the strong interaction of the aromatic cores of the rod like liquid crystal…
High-resolution X-ray scattering studies of the nonpolar thermotropic liquid crystal 4-n-pentylphenylthiol-4'-n-octyloxybenzoate (\bar{8}S5) in aerosil gel nano-networks reveal that the aerosil-induced disorder significantly alters both the…
We study the structure of very thin liquid crystal films frustrated by antagonistic anchorings in the smectic phase. In a cylindrical geometry, the structure is dominated by the defects for film thicknesses smaller than 150 nm and the…
We present ac conductivity spectra of tellurite glasses at several temperatures. For the first time, we report oscillatory modulations at frequencies around MHz. This effect is more pronounced the lower the temperature, and washes out when…
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 use molecular dynamics simulations and the Voronoi tessellation to study the geometrical modifications as a function of temperature in a model silica glass. The standard deviation of the cell volumes, which is a measure of the local…