An overview is given of theory and experiments on liquid crystal phases which appear in
solutions of elongated colloidal particles or stiff polymers. The Onsager (1949) virial theory …

Mesogenic materials exhibit a multitude of transitions involving new phases. Studies of
these phases are of importance in a wide range of scientific fields and as such have …

Liquid crystals are partially ordered systems without a rigid, long-range structure. The study
of these materials covers a wide area: chemical structure, physical properties and technical …

The phase transitions exhibited by systems of hard spherocylinders, with a diameter D and
cylinder length L, are re‐examined with the isothermal–isobaric Monte Carlo (MC‐NPT) …

We review a theory of freezing based on the density-functional approach andcompare a
variety of its versions. The application of the theory to the freezing of various simple and …

The basis of our theoretical understanding of statistical mechanics of dilute gases dates
back to the nineteenth century. The atomistic description of crystalline solids originated in …

We report constant-pressure Monte Carlo simulations of a system of hard ellipses with
aspect ratios k= 2, 4, and 6. The results show three different phases: isotropic, nematic, and …

MC 0.517 0.507 9.786 25.1 Ref. 4 0.484 0.472 7.76 22.3 0.561 Ref. 5 0.330 0.309 0.547
Ref. 6 0.4375 0.4199 5.310 0.5677 Ref. 7 0.494 0.493 0.017 Present work 0.5173 0.5081 …

This chapter deals with the applications of the density functional (DF) formalism to the study
of inhomogeneous systems with hard core interactions. It includes a brief tutorial on the …

In the Onsager theory for the phase transition from the isotropic fluid to the nematic liquid
crystal phase, the Helmholtz free energy of a fluid of hard convex bodies (HCBs) is …