Defects in Liquid Crystals
What are smectics?
What are smectic liquid crystals?
Smectic liquid crystals are one of the spectacular surprises in materials physics. Pour this fluid into a glass container, and it forms beautiful ellipses and hyperbolas (see figure at right). The smectic fluid has a local ordering into layers, and the ellipses you see are defects -- places where the desired ordering breaks down.
Flow dynamics of focal conic domains in smectic-A liquid crystals
The Blue Phases
Networks of Defect Lines
Ideal blue phase template on the surface of a sphere in four dimensions
Boojums in chiral smectic liquid crystal films
Defect theory of the rippled P-beta' phase of lyotropic smectics
Quasicrystalline model for the blue fog phase
