Interplay of polar order and positional order in liquid crystals -- observation of re-entrant ferroelectric nematic phase

Abstract

We show that development of polar order may spontaneously destroy the lamellar structure of a liquid crystal. This results in an unusual sequence of phases with the ferroelectric nematic phase appearing below a non-polar smectic phase. The effect is related to unfavourable dipole interactions within the smectic layers and can be explained by Landau theory in which the temperature dependent term is non-monotonic as it is renormalized by spontaneous electric polarization.