| Recent experimental observation suggest the formation of finger-like instability pattern, when smectic order, characterised by equally spaced layers, is imposed on the bent nematic structure. I propose a simple approach of constructing the space-filling energy minimising structure, which accounts for the bending of layers and yields two distinct wavelength, compatible with experimental data. We also consider an alternative approach, when two smectic domains with orthogonal orientation are brought together and derive the energy of their interface. |
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