RUI: Optical Activity and Light Scattering in High Chiral Liquid Crystals

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The objective of this project is to investigate the influence of chirality on phase transitions in liquid crystals through the use of optical activity and light scattering measurements. Previous work has demonstrated that high chirality has a significant effect on the isotropic to liquid crystal phase transition, both increasing the complexity of the pretransitional effects and weakening the transition itself. The project seeks to extend this work by (1) performing similar optical activity experiments in a different liquid crystal system, including measurements at lower chirality in both the isotropic and blue phases, (2) utilizing light scattering as a new probe into the complex fluctuation phenomena which take place near transitons involving chiral phases, and (3) investigating three liquid crystal to liquid crystal transtions in chiral systems (smectic A - smectic C*, chiral nematic - smectic A, and chiral nematic - smectic C*). The same techniques used to study the isotropic to liquid crystal transition should reveal new information about the effect of chirality on these phase transitions.