Frequency Behavior of the Second-Sound Damping in the Smectic-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:math>Phase of Octylcyanobiphenyl: Evidence for the Divergence of Viscosities

Abstract

The breakdown of hydrodynamics predicted by Mazenko, Ramaswamy, and Toner is verified by experiments which use the excitation of second-sound resonances in the smetic-$A$ phase of octylcyanobiphenyl. One finds a diverging viscosity $\ensuremath{\Delta}\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\eta}}\ensuremath{\cong}\frac{(5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}\mathrm{P} \mathrm{s})}{\ensuremath{\omega}}$, which has an order of magnitude comparable with the crude predictions of the theory.