Pressure-induced phase transitions in liquid crystals: A molecular field approach.

A rigorous microscopic treatment of a nematic fluid system based on a pairwise interaction potential is immensely complex. For studying such systems molecular field theories are often the standard method of choice. In this paper we have chosen a simple effective potential U=u_{4}/v^{4}-u_{2}/v^{2}-Au_{2}/v^{2}〈P_{2}〉P_{2}(cosϑ) to study an isothermal-isobaric ensemble describing a liquid crystalline system. Using this we have studied in particular the pressure dependence of liquid crystalline phase transitions.

Monte Carlo investigation of critical properties of the Landau point of a biaxial liquid-crystal system.

Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are performed to investigate the critical properties of a special singular point usually known as the Landau point. The singular behavior is studied in the case when the order parameter is a tensor of rank 2. Such an order parameter is associated with a nematic-liquid-crystal phase. A three-dimensional lattice dispersion model that exhibits a direct biaxial nematic-to-isotropic phase transition at the Landau point is thus chosen for the present study. Finite-size scaling and cumulant methods are used to obtain precise values of the critical exponent ν=0.713(4), the ratio γ/ν=1.85(1), and the fourth-order critical Binder cumulant U^{*}=0.6360(1). Estimated values of the exponents are in good agreement with renormalization-group predictions.