Related papers: The liquid-crystalline smectic blue phases
The recent discovery of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking has demonstrated the possibility of discovering the exotic textures of ferromagnetic systems in liquid crystalline fluid ferro-electrics. We show that the polar smectic mesophase…
The order parameters for the phenomenological description of the smectic-{\it A} to smectic-{\it C} phase transition are formulated on the basis of molecular symmetry and structure. It is shown that, unless the long molecular axis is an…
Hard spherocylinders (cylinders of length $L$ and diameter $D$ capped at both ends with two hemispheres) provide a suitable model for investigating entropy-driven, mesophase formations in real colloidal fluids that are composed of rigid…
Two-dimensional crystals of classical particles are very peculiar in that melting may occur in two steps, in a continuous fashion, via an intermediate hexatic fluid phase exhibiting quasi-long-range orientational order. On the other hand,…
Melting in 2D is described by the celebrated Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young (KTHNY) theory. The unbinding of two different types of topological defects destroys translational and orientational order at different temperatures. The…
We formulate a simple Landau type model describing macroscopic behaviour recently discovered new smectic phases composed of achiral bent-shaped molecules. Films of such smectics exhibit three types of ordering related to dipole…
We report the observation of a doubly-periodic surface defect-pattern in the liquid crystal 8CB, formed during the nematic--smectic A phase transition. The pattern results from the antagonistic alignment of the 8CB molecules, which is…
Thermotropic liquid crystals are versatile optical materials that exhibit a state of matter intermediate between liquids and solids. Their properties can change significantly with temperature, pressure, or other external factors, leading to…
There is a large variety of bi-layered structures with smectic A type ordering. Results of this paper contribute to a theory of bi-layered phases. The difference between the \( SmC^{*}_{A} \) and \( SmC_{\alpha}^{*} \) phases is described…
We investigate the connection between the transport properties and the thermodynamics of electronic systems with a tendency to form broken-symmetry mesophases evocative of the physics of liquid crystals. Through a hydrodynamic approach to…
The crucial role of hydrodynamic pinch-off instabilities is evidenced in the coarsening stage of viscous liquids. The phase separation of a barium borosilicate glass melt is studied by in-situ synchrotron X-Ray tomography at high…
In liquid crystals, if flexoelectric couplings between polar order and director gradients are strong enough, the uniform nematic phase can become unstable to formation of a modulated polar phase. Previous theories have predicted two types…
Monte Carlo simulations were used to study the assembly of binary mixtures of hard disks with squares, where the components have size ratios that optimize their co-assembly into compositionally disordered solids. It is observed that, along…
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 two-dimensional fluid of particles interacting through a spherically-symmetric and marginally soft two-body repulsion. This model can exist in three different crystal phases, one of them with square symmetry and the other two…
Using the classical density functional theory of freezing and Monte Carlo computer simulations, we explore the liquid-crystalline phase behavior of hard rectangles on flat and cylindrical manifolds. Moreover, we study the effect of a static…
A system that possesses translational symmetry but breaks orientational symmetry is known as a nematic phase. While there are many examples of nematic phases in a wide range of contexts, such as in liquid crystals, complex oxides, and…
The sliding columnar phase is a new liquid-crystalline phase of matter composed of two-dimensional smectic lattices stacked one on top of the other. This phase is characterized by strong orientational but weak positional correlations…
Blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals offer a spectacular example of naturally occurring disclination line networks. Here we numerically solve the hydrodynamic equations of motion to investigate the response of three types of blue…
We report a high-resolution x-ray scattering study of the smectic liquid crystal octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) confined to aligned colloidal aerosil gels. The aligned gels introduce orientational fields that promote long-range nematic order…