Defects are local breakings of symmetry in an ordered medium. The physics of defects has
long been reduced to the study of dislocations in solids, and to the main physical …

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

Polystyrene spheres (2450 Å in diameter) are trapped in a surface energy well at water/air
interface. Because of asymmetry of charge distribution, electrical dipoles are associated with …

Based on graduate lectures given by the authors, Smectic and Columnar Liquid Crystals:
Concepts and Physical Properties Illustrated by Experiments examines lamellar (smectic) …

In this paper we report computer simulation results for bulk Gay-Berne fluids with anisotropy
parameters κ= 3 and κ′= 5. Using molecular dynamics simulations in the NVT ensemble …

X-ray studies have been performed on a new liquid-crystal material which exhibits a
noncrystalline B phase. Using free-standing liquid-crystal film techniques, we find that this B …

The layered spin system with planar rotator symmetry is considered in the case of the small
interplane coupling. It is argued that vortex pair excitations are important in this system, and …

Current understanding of different phases as well as the phase transitions between them
has only been achieved following recent theoretical advances on the effects of …

A smectic-A liquid crystal in three dimensions has been predicted to exhibit algebraic decay
of the layer correlations rather than true long-range order. As a consequence, the smectic …

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 …