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Updated: Apr 21, 2026

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals
Published on: August 15, 2018
Effect of an external electric field on the smectic-Ctilted* phases
M Rjili1, A Gharbi1, T Othman1
1Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Molle et de la Modélisation Électromagnétique, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Université Tunis El Manar, 2092 El Manar Tunis, Tunisia.
Abstract:
We are interested in the chiral tilted smectic subphases, smectic-C(tilted)(*), including commensurate structures as well as the incommensurate smectic-C(α)(*) one. The continuum theory defines two scalar order parameters I and J, which can be coupled with an external electric field through a linear term I × E and a dielectric term J × E(2). We have calculated the changes due to these terms in the phase diagrams in the (α,η) plane, where α comes from the spontaneous twist and η measures the strength of the biaxial order. The coupling with an external electric field induces the expansion of the areas with spontaneous polarization and the appearance of an electroazimuthal effect.
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