Coupling between Smectic and Twist Modes in Polymer Intercalated Smectics

نویسندگان

  • R. Podgornik
  • B. Žekš
چکیده

We analyse the elastic energy of an intercalated smectic where orientationally ordered polymers with an average orientation varying from layer to layer are intercalated between smectic planes. The lowest order terms in the coupling between polymer director and smectic layer curvature are added to the smectic elastic energy. Integration over the smectic degrees of freedom leaves an effective polymer twist energy that has to be included into the total polymer elastic energy leading to a fluctuational renormalization of the intercalated polymer twist modulus. If the polymers are chiral this in its turn leads to a renormalization of the cholesteric pitch.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Helical nanofilaments and the high chirality limit of smectics A.

Liquid crystalline systems exhibiting both macroscopic chirality and smectic order experience frustration resulting in mesophases possessing complex three-dimensional order. In the twist-grain-boundary phase, defect lattices mediate the propagation of twist throughout the system. We propose a new chiral smectic structure composed of a lattice of chiral bundles as a model of the helical nanofila...

متن کامل

Triply periodic smectic liquid crystals.

Twist-grain-boundary phases in smectics are the geometrical analogs of the Abrikosov flux lattice in superconductors. At large twist angles, the nonlinear elasticity is important in evaluating their energetics. We analytically construct the height function of a pi2 twist-grain-boundary phase in smectic-A liquid crystals, known as Schnerk's first surface. This construction, utilizing elliptic fu...

متن کامل

Direct observations of dislocations in thermotropic smectics using freeze-fracture replication

2014 Modern rapid-freezing methods followed by freeze-fracture replication techniques are ideally suited to allow the direct visualization of the three-dimensional structure and defects of thermotropic smectic and cholesteric liquid crystalline phases with resolution approaching molecular dimensions. Cholesterol nonanoate was quench frozen from near the smecticcholesteric transition to reveal e...

متن کامل

Determining the Anchoring Strength of a Capillary Using Topological Defects

We consider a smectic-A in a capillary with surface anchoring that favors parallel alignment. If the bulk phase of the smectic is the standard twist-grain-boundary phase of chiral smectics, then there will be a critical radius below which the smectic will not have any topological defects. Above this radius a single screw dislocation in the center of the capillary will be favored. Along with sur...

متن کامل

Topology and Geometry of Smectic Order on Compact Curved Substrates

We show that smectic order on arbitrary curved substrate can be described by differential form of rank one (1-form), whose geometric meaning is the differential of the local phase field of the density modulation. The exterior derivative of 1-form is shown to be the local dislocation density. Elastic deformations are described by superposition of exact differential forms. More importantly, we us...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2008