Helical Nanofilaments and the High Chirality Limit of Smectics<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:math>

Abstract

Liquid crystalline systems exhibiting both macroscopic chirality and smectic order experience frustration resulting in mesophases possessing complex three-dimensional order. In the twist-grain-boundary phase, defect lattices mediate the propagation of twist throughout the system. We propose a new chiral smectic structure composed of a lattice of chiral bundles as a model of the helical nanofilament (B4) phase of bent-core smectics.