English

The Smectic $A$-$C$ Phase Transition in Biaxial Disordered Environments

Soft Condensed Matter 2015-06-03 v1

Abstract

We study the smectic AA-CC phase transition in biaxial disordered environments, e.g. fully anisotropic aerogel. We find that both the AA and CC phases belong to the universality class of the "XY Bragg glass", and therefore have quasi-long-ranged translational smectic order. The phase transition itself belongs to a new universality class, which we study using an ϵ=7/2d\epsilon=7/2-d expansion. We find a stable fixed point, which implies a continuous transition, the critical exponents of which we calculate.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.1464,
  title  = {The Smectic $A$-$C$ Phase Transition in Biaxial Disordered Environments},
  author = {Leiming Chen and John Toner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.1464},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:47:35.322Z