The Smectic $A$-$C$ Phase Transition in Biaxial Disordered Environments

Abstract

We study the smectic $A$-$C$ phase transition in biaxial disordered environments, e.g. fully anisotropic aerogel. We find that both the $A$ and $C$ phases belong to the universality class of the "XY Bragg glass", and therefore have quasi-long-ranged translational smectic order. The phase transition itself belongs to a new universality class, which we study using an $\epsilon =7/2-d$ expansion. We find a stable fixed point, which implies a continuous transition, the critical exponents of which we calculate.

References in corpus (2)

• Smectic Liquid Crystals in an Anisotropic Random Environment
• Smectics $A$ and $C$, and the Transition between them, in Uniaxial Disordered Environments

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Smectic order, pinning, and phase transition in a smectic liquid crystal cell with a random substrate
• The Smectic A to C Phase Transition in Isotropic Disordered Environments