1,359 research outputs found
Sensitive methods for estimating the anchoring strength of nematic liquid crystals on Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers of fatty acids
The anchoring of the nematic liquid crystal
N-(p-methoxybenzylidene)-p-butylaniline (MBBA) on Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers
of fatty acids (COOHCH) was studied as a function of the length
of the fatty acid alkyl chains, (). The monolayers were
deposited onto ITO-coated glass plates which were used to assemble sandwich
cells of various thickness that were filled with MBBA in the nematic phase. The
mechanism of relaxation from the flow-induced quasi-planar to the
surface-induced homeotropic alignment was studied for the four decreases
linearly with increasing the length of the alkyl chains which suggests that
the Langmuir-Blodgett film plays a role in the phenomenon. This fact was
confirmed by a sensitive estimation of the anchoring strength of MBBA on the
fatty acid monolayers after anchoring breaking which takes place at the
transition between two electric-field--induced turbulent states, denoted as
DSM1 and DSM2. It was found that the threshold electric field for the anchoring
breaking, which can be considered as a measure of the anchoring strength, also
decreases linearly as increases. Both methods thus possess a high
sensitivity in resolving small differences in anchoring strength. In cells
coated with mixed Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers of two fatty acids ( and
) a maximum of the relaxation speed was observed when the two acids were
present in equal amount. This observation homeotropic cells by changing the
ratio between the components of the surfactant film.Comment: LaTeX article, 20 pages, 15 figures, 17 EPS files. 1 figure added,
references moved. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Nonlinear optical properties of a channel waveguide produced with crosslinkable ferroelectric liquid crystals
A binary mixture of ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) was used for the
design of a channel waveguide. The FLCs possess two important functionalities:
a chromophore with a high hyperpolarizability and photoreactive groups.
The smectic liquid crystal is aligned in layers parallel to the glass plates in
a sandwich geometry. This alignment offers several advantages, such as that
moderate electric fields are sufficient to achieve a high degree of polar
order. The arrangement was then permanently fixed by photopolymerization which
yielded a polar network possessing a high thermal and mechanical stability
which did not show any sign of degradation within the monitored period of
several months. The linear and nonlinear optical properties have been measured
and all four independent components of the nonlinear susceptibility tensor
have been determined. The off-resonant -coefficients are remarkably
high and comparable to those of the best known inorganic materials. The
alignment led to an inherent channel waveguide for p-polarized light without
additional preparation steps. The photopolymerization did not induce scattering
sites in the waveguide and the normalized losses were less than 2 dB/cm. The
material offers a great potential for the design of nonlinear optical devices
such as frequency doublers of low power laser diodes.Comment: LaTeX2e article, 15 pages, 10 figures, 11 EPS files, submitted to
Physical Review
Alignment transition in a nematic liquid crystal due to field-induced breaking of anchoring
We report on the alignment transition of a nematic liquid crystal from
initially homeotropic to quasi-planar due to field-induced anchoring breaking.
The initial homeotropic alignment is achieved by Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers.
In this geometry the anchoring strength can be evaluated by the Frederiks
transition technique. Applying an electric field above a certain threshold
provokes turbulent states denoted DSM1 and DSM2. While DSM1 does not affect the
anchoring, DSM2 breaks the coupling between the surface and the liquid crystal:
switching off the field from a DSM2 state does not immediately restore the
homeotropic alignment. Instead, we obtain a quasi-planar metastable alignment.
The cell thickness dependence for the transition is related to theComment: 7 pages, LaTeX2e article, 4 figures, 7 EPS files, added references,
accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter
Charge-Vortex Duality in Double-Layered Josephson Junction Arrays
A system of two parallel Josephson junction arrays coupled by interlayer
capacitances is considered in the situation where one layer is in the
vortex-dominated and the other in the charge-dominated regime. This system
shows a symmetry (duality) of the relevant degrees of freedom, i.e. the
vortices in one layer and the charges in the other. In contrast to single-layer
arrays both contribute to the kinetic energy. The charges feel the magnetic
field created by vortices, and, vice versa, the vortices feel a gauge field
created by charges. For long-range interaction of the charges the system
exhibits two Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions, one for vortices and
another one for charges. The interlayer capacitance suppresses both transition
temperatures. The charge-unbinding transition is suppressed already for
relatively weak coupling, while the vortex-unbinding transition is more robust.
The shift of the transition temperature for vortices is calculated in the
quasi-classical approximation for arbitrary relations between the capacitances
(both weak and strong coupling).Comment: 12 pages, Revtex 3.
Decoherence by engineered quantum baths
We introduce, and determine decoherence for, a wide class of non-trivial
quantum spin baths which embrace Ising, XY and Heisenberg universality classes
coupled to a two-level system. For the XY and Ising universality classes we
provide an exact expression for the decay of the loss of coherence beyond the
case of a central spin coupled uniformly to all the spins of the baths which
has been discussed so far in the literature. In the case of the Heisenberg spin
bath we study the decoherence by means of the time-dependent density matrix
renormalization group. We show how these baths can be engineered, by using
atoms in optical lattices.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Resistance of Josephson Junction Arrays at Low Temperatures
We study motion of vortices in arrays of Josephson junctions at zero
temperature where it is controlled by quantum tunneling from one plaquette to
another. The tunneling process is characterized by a finite time and can be
slow compared to the superconducting gap (so that ). The
dissipation which accompanies this process arises from rare processes when a
vortex excites a quasiparticle above the gap while tunneling through a single
junction. We find that the dissipation is significant even in the case , in particular it is not exponentially small in this parameter. We
use the calculated energy dissipation for the single vortex jump to estimate
the physical resistance of the whole array.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX references added, to appear in PR
Increasing of entanglement entropy from pure to random quantum critical chains
It is known that the entropy of a block of spins of size embedded in an
infinite pure critical spin chain diverges as the logarithm of with a
prefactor fixed by the central charge of the corresponding conformal field
theory. For a class of strongly random spin chains, it has been shown that the
correspondent block entropy still remains universal and diverges
logarithmically with an "effective" central charge. By computing the
entanglement entropy for a family of models which includes the -states
random Potts chain and the clock model, we give some definitive answer to
some recent conjectures about the behaviour of the effective central charge. In
particular, we show that the ratio between the entanglement entropy in the pure
and in the disordered system is model dependent and we provide a series of
critical models where the entanglement entropy grows from the pure to the
random case.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figures, added reference
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