Skip to main content
Article

First-Order Phase Transitions in Superconductors and Smectic-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:math>Liquid Crystals

B. I. HalperinT. C. LubenskyBell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974Shang-keng MaBell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
1974en
ABI

Abstract

The superconducting phase transition is predicted to be weakly first order, because of effects of the intrinsic fluctuating magnetic field, according to a Wilson-Fisher $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$-expansion analysis, as well as a generalized mean-field calculation appropriate to a type-I superconductor. Similar results hold for the phase transition from a smectic-$A$ to a nematic liquid crystal.

Identifiers

Citations and references

Cited by 20 references