title: Monte Carlo simulations of spontaneous ferroelectric order in discotic liquid crystals.
abstract: The demonstration of a spontaneous macroscopic ferroelectric order in liquid phases in the absence of any long-range positional order is considered as an outstanding problem of great fundamental and technological interest. We report here off-lattice Monte Carlo simulations of a system of polar achiral disklike ellipsoids which spontaneously exhibit a novel ferroelectric nematic phase which is a liquid in three dimensions, considering attractive-repulsive pair interaction suitable for the anisotropic particles. At lower temperature, the ferroelectric nematic phase condenses to a ferroelectric hexagonal columnar fluid with an axial macroscopic polarization. A spontaneous ferroelectric order of dipolar origin is established here for the first time in columnar liquid crystals. Our study demonstrates that simple dipolar interactions are indeed sufficient to produce a class of novel ferroelectric fluids of essential interest. The present work reveals the structure-property relationship of achieving long searched ferroelectric liquid crystal phases and transitions between them, and we hope these findings will help in future development of technologically important fluid ferroelectric materials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Calcutta, 92 Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road, Kolkata 700 009, India. tkb.tkbose@gmail.com
authors.forename: Tushar Kanti
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Bose
authors.forename: Jayashree
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Saha