Non-nematicity of the filamentary phase in systems of hard minor circular arcs

TL;DR

This study investigates the phase behavior of hard minor circular arcs, revealing that their filamentary phase is non-nematic with undulate density and diffusion mechanisms similar to smectic phases, challenging previous assumptions.

Contribution

It demonstrates through theory and simulations that the filamentary phase of hard minor circular arcs is non-nematic, providing new insights into their phase structure.

Findings

The density function is undulate transversely to filament axes.

Mobility occurs via a smectic-like diffusion mechanism.

The phase is not a modulated nematic phase.

Abstract

This work further investigates an aspect of the phase behavior of hard circular arcs, whose phase diagram has been recently calculated by Monte Carlo numerical simulations: the non-nematicity of the filamentary phase that hard minor circular arcs form. Both second-virial density-functional theory and further Monte Carlo numerical simulations find that the positional one-particle density function is undulate in the direction transverse to the axes of the filaments while further Monte Carlo numerical simulations find that the mobility of the hard minor circular arcs across the filaments occurs via a mechanism reminiscent of the mechanism of diffusion in a smectic phase: the filamentary phase is not a {``modulated'' [``splay(-bend)'']} nematic phase.