Elastic light scattering by smectic A focal conic defects

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Abstract
Quasi-periodic arrays of focal conic (PFC) defects, induced by dilation of a homeotropic smectic A sample, are shown to produce a characteristic multi-band scattered light intensity distribution as a function of scattering vector. The scattering, which is caused by the confocal line discontinuities is quantitatively analysed to yield two independent, self consistent determinations of PFC focal length as a function of applied dilation. The existence of smectic A focal conic defects having focal lengths as small as a single smectic layer is demonstrated