title: Effective long-range interlayer interactions and electric-field-induced subphases in ferrielectric liquid crystals.
abstract: Microbeam resonant x-ray scattering experiments recently revealed the sequential emergence of electric-field-induced subphases (stable states) with exceptionally large unit cells consisting of 12 and 15 smectic layers. We explain the emergence of the field-induced subphases by the quasimolecular model based on the Emelyanenko-Osipov long-range interlayer interactions (LRILIs) together with our primitive way of understanding the frustration in clinicity using the q_{E} number defined as q_{E}=|[R]-[L]|/([R]+[L]); here [R] and [L] refer to the numbers of smectic layers with directors tilted to the right and to the left, respectively, in the unit cell of a field-induced subphase. We show that the model actually stabilizes the field-induced subphases with characteristic composite unit cells consisting of several blocks, each of which is originally a ferrielectric three-layer unit cell stabilized by the LRILIs, but some of which would be modified to become ferroelectric by an applied electric field. In a similar line of thought, we also try to understand the puzzling electric-field-induced birefringence data in terms of the LRILIs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.|Department of Chemistry, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.
authors.forename: A D L
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Chandani
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Atsuo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fukuda
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Jagdish K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Vij
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoichi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takanishi
authors.affiliation: Photon Factory, Institute of Materials Structure Science, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan.
authors.forename: Atsuo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Iida