Induction of new ferrielectric smectic phases in the electric field

ABSTRACT

A theoretical approach for the description of intermediate phase sequences (observed in the temperature range between Sm-C* and Sm-C_A*) in the presence of electric field is derived. The induction of long-periodicity ferrielectric smectic phases by the electric field is discussed. In particular, we acknowledge the induction of the 12-layer and 15-layer periodicity subphases, whose structure coincides with the ones observed by resonant x-ray scattering in [A. Iida, I. Nishiyama, and Y. Takanishi, Phys. Rev. E 89, 032503 (2014)].

KEYWORDS:

• Smectic
• intermediate antiferroelectric
• long-periodicity subphases

Funding

This work was partially supported by RFBR, research project No. 15-02-08269, 15-59-32410, 15-32-20859.