The complex coupling between elastic strains and smectic layer distortions in smectic A elastomers is re-analysed in terms of the penalty for the relative translations of layers with respect to the matrix in which they are embedded. This modifies the starting point of a recent theory of the elastic free energy of smectic A elastomers (Terentjev E.M. and Warner M., J. Phys. II France 4 (1994) 111-126), but leaves most of the analysis itself and the conclusions unchanged. In the large, layers move affinely with the elastic matrix, but there are layer fluctuations possible on a scale set by the mean size of chains in the network. There is a rigid constraint that uniform shear strains of the network produce corresponding uniform rotations of the smectic layer system.
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Lubensky et al. (1994) studied this question.