Abstract
The small magnitude of (-)/, where is the nematic-isotropic phase transition temperature and denotes the virtual transition temperature, has been a long-standing puzzle in the physics of liquid crystals. We show that by extending the mean field theory to include the isotropic, density-dependent component of the molecular interaction the magnitudes of both (-)/ and the density change at the transition automatically become in accord with the experimental values. In addition, the theory yields a value of /dp, where p denotes pressure, that is on the same order as the experiment.
- Received 30 October 1992
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.1271
©1993 American Physical Society