On the structure of blue phase III

Abstract

We report large scale simulations of the blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals. Our results suggest a structure for blue phase III, the blue fog, which has been the subject of a long debate in liquid crystal physics. We propose that blue phase III is an amorphous network of disclination lines, which is thermodynamically and kinetically stabilised over crystalline blue phases at intermediate chiralities}. This amorphous network becomes ordered under an applied electric field, as seen in experiments.

9 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Formation of a Nematic Fluid at High Fields in Sr3Ru2O7
• Ordering dynamics of blue phases entails kinetic stabilization of amorphous networks
• Thermodynamics of Blue Phases In Electric Fields

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