Optical demonstration of an electric-field-induced tricritical point in a nematic liquid crystal with negative dielectric anisotropy.

Authors

Yoshinori Takikawa, Yuta Yamamoto, Taro Tamehiro, Makoto Ohno, Yuji Sasaki, Makoto Iwata, Tomoyuki Nagaya, Hiroshi Orihara

Published in

Physical review. E. Volume 114. Issue 2-2. Pages 025415.

Abstract

The Landau-de Gennes phenomenological theory predicts the existence of a tricritical point in nematic liquid crystals with negative dielectric anisotropy, at which the nematic-isotropic phase transition changes from first order to second order under a sufficiently strong electric field. In this study, we successfully demonstrated the existence of a tricritical point by measuring the transmitted light intensity near the nematic-isotropic phase boundary under an applied electric field using a polarizing microscope and a temperature-gradient cell that allows position-to-temperature mapping with high accuracy. Furthermore, we measured the response of the transmitted light intensity to a superimposed ac electric field, and discussed the results on the basis of the phenomenology.

PMID:
42768592
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 22 Sep 2026.

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