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Updated: Jul 26, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Critical fluctuations at the untilted-tilted phase transition in chiral smectic liquid crystals
Abstract:
The layer compression modulus B was measured near the Sm-A-Sm-C* and Sm-A-Sm-C(*)(A) transitions of chiral smectic liquid crystals. B shows a marked pretransitional softening due to the order parameter fluctuations above the phase transition. The width of the critical region of the Sm-A-Sm-C* and Sm-A-Sm-C(*)(A) transitions is smaller than that of the Sm-A-Sm-C(*)(alpha) transition. The critical exponents of B are in agreement with the theoretical description based on renormalization-group method. These results reveal that these transitions are not of the Landau mean-field type.
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