Direct Measurement of Orientation Correlations: Observation of the Landau-Peierls Divergence in a Freely Suspended Tilted Smectic Film

Abstract
Cross-correlation intensity-fluctuation spectroscopy is used to exhibit the space-time behavior of fluctuations in the director orientation difference between a pair of points in the two-dimensional nematiclike director field of a freely suspended tilted smectic film. The Landau-Peierls divergence expected with increasing time is observed directly.