Department of Physics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA;Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J. 07974, USA;Department of Physics, State University of New York at Buffalo, Amherst, NY 14260, USA
Abstract:
The divergence of the bend elastic constant above the nematic-smectic-A transition has been measured in undoped 80CB and in mixtures of 80CB and 70CB by Rayleigh scattering. The apparent critical exponent is found to be insensitive to the doping and has a nonclassical result.