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Weirdest Martensite: Smectic Liquid Crystal Microstructure and Weyl-Poincaré Invariance

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

D.B. Liarte
M. Bierbaum
R.A. Mosna
R.D. Kamien
J.P. Sethna

Abstract

Smectic liquid crystals are remarkable, beautiful examples of materials microstructure, with ordered patterns of geometrically perfect ellipses and hyperbolas. The solution of the complex problem of filling three-dimensional space with domains of focal conics under constraining boundary conditions yields a set of strict rules, which are similar to the compatibility conditions in a martensitic crystal. Here we present the rules giving compatible conditions for the concentric circle domains found at two-dimensional smectic interfaces with planar boundary conditions. Using configurations generated by numerical simulations, we develop a clustering algorithm to decompose the planar boundaries into domains. The interfaces between different domains agree well with the smectic compatibility conditions. We also discuss generalizations of our approach to describe the full three-dimensional smectic domains, where the variant symmetry group is the Weyl-Poincaré group of Lorentz boosts, translations, rotations, and dilatations. © 2016 American Physical Society.

Date Published

Journal

Physical Review Letters

Volume

116

Issue

14

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84963713698&doi=10.1103%2fPhysRevLett.116.147802&partnerID=40&md5=d0b07f6847a2ad39df2413ae4b316e22

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.147802

Research Area

Group (Lab)

James Sethna Group

Funding Source

DE-FG02-07ER46393
1262047
DMR12-62047
2013/09357-9

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