Non-debye relaxation and glass-like behavior of confined liquid crystals

We report on non-Debye relaxation of fluctuations of director orientations observed in dynamic light scattering experiments for 5CB confined to random pores with average pore sizes of 100 Angstrom and in 5CB filled with Aerosil particles. The relaxation due to reorientations of molecules around short axes investigated by means of dielectric spectroscopy is also found to be of non-Debye type in confined 5CB. Deep supercooling of 5CB below the bulk crystallization temperature was observed in pores. The relaxation rate of the process due to the molecular rotation in deeply supercooled state is slower than at the temperatures corresponding to nematic phase by many orders of magnitude and shows glass-like temperature dependence.