A Drunk Hedgehog in a Shallow Potential Well
01 January 1992
Smectic C has a layered structure on a microscopic length scale and is a two dimensional anisotropic liquid in the plane of each layer. Because of its layered structure, (a discrete symmetry it shares with soap), it is possible to draw freely suspended smectic C films that are an integral number of layers thick. In the Colorado experiment, the films are only three layers (75 Angstrom) thick!