Director-charge coupling in a ferroelectric liquid crystal: Experiment

Quasielastic-light-scattering measurements are reported for a chiral smectic-C* liquid crystal doped with an organic salt. Two classes of relaxation processes are observed: a fast decay corresponding to azimuthal director fluctuations, and several slow decays corresponding to ionic diffusion, which couples to the director through the local polarization. Based on the theory of Lu, Rosenblatt, and Petschek [Phys. Rev. E 47, 1139 (1993)], the ion concentration and average mobility are obtained.