An experimental investigation of hysteretic switching in antiferroelectric
liquid crystals has been carried out. It is shown that in switching from th
e antiferroelectric state to the ferroelectric state there exists both a he
terogeneous process involving the growth of finger-like domains and a homog
eneous process in which the whole cell uniformly switches. At high field sl
ew rates the homogeneous process dominates. However, ferroelectric to antif
erroelectric switching involves only a heterogeneous process. A simple anal
ytic model is then used to describe the experimental results and thus under
stand the competition between homogeneous and heterogeneous switching.