2003/11/30 by Yuri Martı́nez-Ratón, Yuri Martinez-Raton
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.69.061712
published as Phys. Rev. E 69, 061712 (2004) · 11 pages, 10 figures
openalex publication_date 2004/06/14 · arxiv created 2004/06/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The phase diagram of prolate and oblate particles in the restricted orientations approximation (Zwanzig model) is calculated. Transitions to different inhomogeneous phases (smectic, columnar, oriented, or plastic solid) are studied through minimization of the fundamental measure functional (FMF) of hard parallelepipeds. The study of parallel hard cubes (PHC's) as a particular case is also included motivated by recent simulations of this system. As a result a rich phase behavior is obtained which include, apart from the usual liquid crystal phases, a very peculiar phase (called here discotic smectic) which was already found in the only existing simulation of the model, and which turns out to be stable because of the restrictions imposed on the orientations. The phase diagram is compared at a qualitative level with simulation results of other anisotropic particle systems.