This article reviews, from a very personal point of view, the origins and the early work on
transitions driven by topological defects such as vortices in the two dimensional planar rotor …

Smectic membranes are perfect model systems for studying low-dimensional phase
transitions and the associated fluctuations. During the last two decades we have seen …

Ferroelectric liquid crystals have been a major research topic since 30 years. However,
when it comes to liquid crystals, the term “ferroelectric” is strongly ambiguous and frequently …

As their name indicates, liquid crystals simultaneously exhibit some characteristics common
to both ordinary isotropic liquids and solid crystals. This ambivalence is also found in the …

A three-dimensional solid with an equilibrium concentration of unbound dislocation loops
displays a resistance to torsion not present in isotropic liquids. There is residual bond-angle …

By means of density functional theory calculations, we predict that several two-dimensional
AB binary monolayers, where A and B atoms belong to group IV or III-V, are ferroelectric …

The dynamics of melting in two dimensions is studied, assuming that solids melt into liquids
via a sequence of dislocation and disclination unbinding transitions. The hydrodynamics of …

Calorimetric and optical reflectivity studies on free-standing partially fluorinated liquid-crystal
films have revealed novel melting phenomena. The smectic-A-isotropic transition occurs …

A recent theory of two-dimensional melting is applied to freely suspended liquid-crystal films
with a tilt degree of freedom. As many as seven distinct phases are possible, including those …

We present experimental and theoretical studies of the structures and transitions of the
molecular orientation field of a smectic C* liquid crystal in the surface-stabilized geometry …