  The orientational and translational order of a thermotropic ferroelectric
liquid crystal (2MBOCBC) imbibed in self-organized, parallel, cylindrical pores
with radii of 10, 15, or 20 nm in anodic aluminium oxide monoliths (AAO) are
explored by high-resolution linear and circular optical birefringence as well
as neutron diffraction texture analysis. The results are compared to
experiments on the bulk system. The native oxidic pore walls do not provide a
stable smectogen wall anchoring. By contrast, a polymeric wall grafting
enforcing planar molecular anchoring results in a thermal-history independent
formation of smectic C* helices and a reversible chevron-like layer buckling.
An enhancement of the optical rotatory power by up to one order of magnitude of
the confined compared to the bulk liquid crystal is traced to the
pretransitional formation of helical structures at the smectic-A*-to-smectic-C*
transformation. A linear electro-optical birefringence effect evidences
collective fluctuations in the molecular tilt vector direction along the
confined helical superstructures, i.e. the Goldstone phason excitations typical
of the para-to-ferroelectric transition. Their relaxation frequencies increase
with the square of the inverse pore radii as characteristic of plane-wave
excitations and are two orders of magnitude larger than in the bulk, evidencing
an exceptionally fast electro-optical functionality of the
liquid-crystalline-AAO nanohybrids.
