Bond-orientational ordering and sheer rigidity in modulated colloidal liquids

From Landau-Alexander-McTague theory and Monte Carlo simulation results we show that the modulated liquid obtained by subjecting a colloidal system to a periodic laser modulation has long range bond-orientational order and no n-zero shear rigidity. From infinite field simulation results we show that in the modulated liquid phase, the translational order parameter correlatio n function decays to zero exponentially while the correlation function for the bond-orientational order saturates to a finite value at large distances . (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved.