The present work was made possible by the support of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials (ALCOM) through Grant No DMR89-20147.
Figure 1:
Geometry of the model antiferroelectric liquid crystal
Figure 2: Different configurations of the model AFLC:
a) Antiferroelectric state; b) Ferroelectric state; c) Intermediate state
of the
AFLC according to the ``uncoupled" model; d) Intermediate state of the AFLC
according
to the ``coupled" model.
Figure 3: The critical field 
, at which the system leaves an
ideally aligned antiferroelectric state, is shown for ``coupled" and for
``uncoupled"
models as a function of cell thickness d.
