Nonlinear fluctuation effects in dynamics of freely suspended films

Long-scale dynamic fluctuation phenomena in freely suspended films is analyzed. We consider isotropic films that, say, can be pulled from bulk smectic-A liquid crystals. The key feature of such objects is possibility of bending deformations of the film. The bending (also known as flexular) mode turns out to be anomalously weakly attenuated. In the harmonic approximation there is no viscous-like damping of the bending mode, proportional to q² (q is the wave vector of the mode), since it is forbidden by the rotational symmetry. Therefore, the bending mode is strongly affected by nonlinear dynamic fluctuation effects. We calculate the dominant fluctuation contributions to the damping of the bending mode due to its coupling to the inplane viscous mode, which restores the viscous-like q² damping of the bending mode. Our calculations are performed in the framework of the perturbation theory where the coupling of the modes is assumed to be small, then the bending mode damping is relatively weak. We discuss our results in the context of existing experiments and numeric simulations of the freely suspended films and propose possible experimental observations of our predictions.