The Experimental Observation of the Landau-Peierls Divergence in Smectic Fields and the Two Dimensional Phase Transition in Colloidal Crystals

We have studied two-dimensional melting in a colloidal suspension of diameter Phi=0.305mu spheres confined in a wedge geometry by direct lattice imaging using a high power optical microscope. Images are formed on a 384 X 576 pixel charged coupled device camera which is read out digitally and stored as a single array.