Smectic-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:math>and -<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>C</mml:mi></mml:math>phases, and the transition between them, in uniaxial disordered environments
Smectic-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:math>and -<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>C</mml:mi></mml:math>phases, and the transition between them, in uniaxial disordered environments
We present a theory of the elasticity and fluctuations of the smectic-$A$ and -$C$ phases in uniaxial, anisotropic disordered environments: e.g., stretched aerogel. We find that, bizarrely, the low-temperature, lower-symmetry smectic-$C$ phase is less translationally ordered than the high-temperature, higher-symmetry smectic-$A$ phase, with short-range ``$m=1$ Bragg glass'' and algebraic ``$XY$ …