A hexatic smectic phase with algebraically decaying bond-orientational order

Abstract

The hexatic phase predicted by the theories of two-dimensional melting is characterised by the power law decay of the orientational correlations whereas the in-layer bond orientational order in all the hexatic smectic phases observed so far was found to be long-range. We report a hexatic smectic phase where the in-layer bond orientational correlations decay as $\propto r^{-1/4}$, in quantitative agreement with the hexatic ordering predicted by the theory for two dimensions. The phase was formed in a molecular dynamics simulation of a one-component system of particles interacting via a spherically symmetric potential. This is the first observation of the theoretically predicted two-dimensional hexatic order in a three-dimensional system.