Critical behavior of the nematic-isotropic phase transition

In this paper we establish the equation of state near the coexistence curve (the region of small external field, below the critical temperature) of the nematic-isotropic phase transition. The temperature difference of Tc-T*, where Tc is the nematic-isotropic phase transition temperature and T* is the temperature at which the light scattering intensity diverges in the supercooled isotropic phase of nematic-isotropic transition, is obtained. The present results show considerable improvement over an earlier work utilizing the equation of state near a critical and a tricritical point.