Dirt Softens Soap: Anomalous Elasticity of Disordered Smectics
Abstract
We show that a smectic in a disordered medium (e.g., aerogel) exhibits anomalous elasticity, with the compression modulus B\(k\) vanishing and the bend modulus K\(k\) diverging as k-->0. In addition, the effective disorder develops long ranged correlations. These divergences are much stronger than those driven by thermal fluctuations in pure smectics, and are controlled by a zero temperature glassy fixed point, which we study in an ɛ = 5-d expansion. We discuss the experimental implications of these theoretical predictions.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- June 1997
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.78.4414
- arXiv:
- arXiv:cond-mat/9701008
- Bibcode:
- 1997PhRvL..78.4414R
- Keywords:
-
- Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter;
- Condensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
- E-Print:
- 4 RevTeX pgs, 1 ps figure