Related papers: Phase transitions and soft elasticity of smectic e…
We analyse the effect of thermal fluctuations on the elastic constants of the decoupled lamellar phase of tethered, crystalline membranes. Using a momentum-shell renormalization group technique, we show that the smectic-A -like…
We propose a lattice statistical model to investigate the phase diagrams and the soft responses of nematic liquid-crystal elastomers. Using suitably scaled infinite-range interactions, we obtain exact self-consistent equations for the…
By employing Molecular Dynamics computer simulations, the phase behavior of systems of rodlike particles with varying degree of internal flexibility has been traced from the perfectly rigid rod limit till very flexible particles, and from…
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…
We demonstrate that a first order isotropic-to-nematic phase transition in liquid crystals can be succesfully modeled within the generalized Landau-de Gennes theory by selecting an appropriate combination of elastic constants. The numerical…
We have calculated the phase diagrams of one--component fluids made of five types of biaxial particles differing in their cross sections. The orientation of the principal particle axis is fixed in space, while the second axis is allowed to…
Liquid crystalline phases of matter permeate nature and technology, with examples ranging from cell membranes to liquid-crystal displays. Remarkably, electronic liquid crystal phases can exist in two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) at…
We mathematically model Smectic-A (SmA) phases with a modified Landau-de Gennes (mLdG) model. The orientational order of the SmA phase is described by a tensor-order parameter $\mathbf{Q}$, and the positional order is described by a real…
Elongated colloidal rods at sufficient packing conditions are known to form stable lamellar or smectic phases. Using a simplified volume-exclusion model, we propose a generic equation-of-state for hard-rod smectics that is robust against…
A coupled phase-field and hydrodynamic model is introduced to describe a two-phase, weakly compressible smectic (layered phase) in contact with an isotropic fluid of different density. A non-conserved smectic order parameter is coupled to a…
We present a detailed analysis of the molecular packing of a strained liquid crystal elastomer composed of chiral mesogens in the smectic A phase. X-ray diffraction patterns of the elastomer collected over a range of orientations with…
In liquid-crystalline elastomers, the nematic order parameter and the induced strain vary smoothly across the isotropic-nematic transition, without the expected first-order discontinuity. To investigate this smooth variation, we measure the…
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 smectic AC transition in anisotropic and uniaxial disordered environments, e.g., aerogel with an external field. We find very strange behavior of translational correlations: the low-temperature, lower-symmetry Smectic C phase…
Structural studies by synchrotron x-ray diffraction on two main-chain smectic-C elastomers reveal the presence of two different relaxation mechanisms in these systems at low and high strains. At low strains, the smectic layers are…
We study theoretically the smectic A to C phase transition in isotropic disordered environments. Surprisingly, we find that, as in the clean smectic A to C phase transition, smectic layer fluctuations do not affect the nature of the…
Smectic liquid crystals are charcterized by layers that have a preferred uniform spacing and vanishing curvature in their ground state. Dislocations in the smectics play an important role in phase nucleation, layer reorientation, and…
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…
Single crystal nematic elastomers undergo a transition from a strongly ordered phase N to an "isotropic" phase I. We show that: (a) samples produced under tension by the Finkelmann procedure are intrinsically anisotropic and should show a…
In a type II superconductor in a moderate magnetic field, the superconductor to normal state transition may be described as a phase transition in which the vortex lattice melts into a liquid. In a biaxial superconductor, or even a uniaxial…