Isotropic-nematic transition of hard ellipses

The orientational freezing of a system of hard ellipses, as a first approximation for a nematogen adsorbed on a smooth substrate, is studied with the aid of an approximate density-functional theory used previously for the study of hard ellipsoids. The isotropic-nematic transition, which was first or...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cuesta, J. A., Fernández Tejero, Carlos, Baus, Marc
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:1989
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/58898
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/58898
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:536
Optics
Physics
Atomic
Molecular & chemical
Termodinámica
2213 Termodinámica
Descripción
Sumario:The orientational freezing of a system of hard ellipses, as a first approximation for a nematogen adsorbed on a smooth substrate, is studied with the aid of an approximate density-functional theory used previously for the study of hard ellipsoids. The isotropic-nematic transition, which was first order for the ellipsoids, is shown to proceed via a continuous transition in the case of the ellipses. We also show that when reducing the dimensionality of the angular space of ellipsoids, the width of the transition shrinks continuously and reaches zero only for a strictly two dimensional angular space.