Abstract

In the first part I shall summarize results we reported recently of low-dimensional fluctuations in smectic liquid crystal membranes [1] in the range of 10 ns to 10 µs using both x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) and neutron spin echo (NSE) [2]. XPCS probes surface tension-dominated relaxation times. In this regime, fluctuations with long wavelengths reveal an oscillatory damping, while fluctuations with a shorter wavelength show a simple exponential decay. NSE reveals a new regime, determined by bulk elasticity, in which the fast relaxation times decrease with the wave vector.

© 2004 Optical Society of America