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Universal non-monotonic smectic fluctuations of liquid crystal films in a magnetic field |
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| Authors: | IN de Oliveira ML Lyra |
| Institution: | (1) Departamento de Fısica, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, 57072-970 Maceió - AL, Brazil, BR |
| Abstract: | Free-standing liquid crystal films with positive diamagnetic susceptibility can have the smectic ordering enhanced by an external field applied perpendicular to the plane layers. Within a quadratic functional integral approach, we investigate the interplay between the smectic order induced by an external field H and that due to the surface tension γ between the film and the surrounding gas. We find that the average smectic fluctuation is a non-monotonic function of film thickness, with a characteristic thickness scale ξ H delimiting the predominance of surface tension and magnetic field effects. This characteristic thickness obeys simple asymptotic power-law relations as a function of the ordering terms which allows us to represent the average smectic fluctuations in a universal scaling form. Received 7 January 2003 Published online 1st April 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: marcelo@ising.fis.ufal.br |
| Keywords: | PACS 61 30 Hn Surface phenomena: alignment anchoring anchoring transitions surface-induced layering surface-induced ordering wetting prewetting transitions and wetting transitions – 61 30 Gd Orientational order of liquid crystals electric and magnetic field effects on order – 61 30 Dk Continuum models and theories of liquid crystal structure |
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