1999/12/30 by E. I. Kats, Kats, E. I., J. Lajzerowicz +2
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/9912486
arxiv created 1999/12/30 · openalex publication_date 1999/12/30 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We formulate a simple Landau type model describing macroscopic behaviour recently discovered new smectic phases composed of achiral bent-shaped molecules. Films of such smectics exhibit three types of ordering related to dipole polarization, molecular tilt, and chirality. However due to specific third order coupling of the order parameters these three types of symmetry-breaking are not independent ones, and this fact leads to specific domain structures really observed in experiments.