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Curvature energy of a focal conic domain with arbitrary eccentricity
1Laboratoire de Mineralogie-Cristallographie, UMR 7590, Universite de Paris-VI and Universite de Paris-VII, Case 115, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Abstract:
The most frequently observed focal conic domains (FCD's) in lamellar phases are those based on confocal paris of ellipse and hyperbola. Experimentally, the eccentricity of the ellipse takes a broad range of values 01 (under the constraint of a fixed major semiaxis of the ellipse); exceptions include situations with large saddle-splay elastic constant and small domains where the applicability of the elastic theory is limited. In realistic cases, a value of eccentricity smaller than 1 is stabilized by factors other than the curvature energy: by dislocations emerging from the FCD's with e not equal0, compression of layers and surface anchoring.