title: Nematics with quenched disorder: violation of self-averaging.
abstract: We consider the isotropic-to-nematic transition in liquid crystals confined to aerogel hosts, and assume that the aerogel acts as a random field. We generally find that self-averaging is violated. For a bulk transition that is weakly first order, the violation of self-averaging is so severe that even the correlation length becomes non-self-averaging: no phase transition remains in this case. For a bulk transition that is more strongly first order, the violation of self-averaging is milder, and a phase transition is observed.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Theoretical Physics, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Fish
authors.forename: R L C
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Vink