Nematic-Isotropic Transition with Quenched Disorder

Details Nematic-Isotropic Transition with Quenched Disorder Nematic-Isotropic Transition with Quenched Disorder

2006-09-30

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0610010v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

12 pages, 4 figures, to be published on PRE

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevE.74.051707

Nematic elastomers do not show the discontinuous, first-order, phase transition that the Landau-De Gennes mean field theory predicts for a quadrupolar ordering in 3D. We attribute this behavior to the presence of network crosslinks, which act as sources of quenched orientational disorder. We show that the addition of weak random anisotropy results in a singular renormalization of the Landau-De Gennes expression, adding an energy term proportional to the inverse quartic power of order parameter Q. This reduces the first-order discontinuity in Q. For sufficiently high disorder strength the jump disappears altogether and the phase transition becomes continuous, in some ways resembling the supercritical transitions in external field.

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