Universal Power Law in the Orientational Relaxation in Thermotropic Liquid Crystals

Chakrabarti, Dwaipayan and Jose, Prasanth P and Chakrabarty, Suman and Bagchi, Biman (2005) Universal Power Law in the Orientational Relaxation in Thermotropic Liquid Crystals. In: Physical Review Letters, 95 (19). 197801-1-197801-4.

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Abstract

We observe a surprisingly general power law decay at short to intermediate times in orientational relaxation in a variety of model systems (both calamitic and discotic, and also lattice) for thermotropic liquid crystals. As all these systems transit across the isotropic-nematic phase boundary, two power law relaxation regimes, separated by a plateau, emerge, giving rise to a steplike feature (well known in glassy liquids) in the single-particle second-rank orientational time correlation function. In contrast to its probable dynamical origin in supercooled liquids, we show that the power law here can originate from the thermodynamic fluctuations of the orientational order parameter, driven by the rapid growth in the second-rank orientational correlation length.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Review Letters
Publisher:	American Institute of Physics
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to American Institute of Physics.
Department/Centre:	Division of Chemical Sciences > Solid State & Structural Chemistry Unit
Date Deposited:	14 Dec 2005
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 04:22
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/4653

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