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Isotropic-Cholesteric Transition Of A Weakly Chiral Elastomer Cylinder, Xiangjun Xing, Aparna Baskaran

Physics - All Scholarship

When a chiral isotropic elastomer is brought to low temperature cholesteric phase, the nematic degree of freedom tends to order and form a helix. Due to the nemato-elastic coupling, this also leads to elastic deformation of the polymer network that is locally coaxial with the nematic order. However, the helical structure of nematic order is incompatible with the energetically preferred elastic deformation. The system is therefore frustrated and appropriate compromise has to be achieved between the nematic ordering and the elastic deformation. For a strongly chiral elastomer whose pitch is much smaller than the system size, this problem has been …