English

Chiral hedgehog textures in 2D XY-like ordered domains

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-10-31 v2

Abstract

The textures associated with a point defect centered in a circular domain of a thin film with XY-like ordering have been analyzed. The family of equilibrium textures, both stable and metastable, can be classified by a new radial topological number in addition to the winding number of the defect. Chiral textures are supported in an achiral system as a result of spontaneously broken chiral symmetry. Among these chiral textures, our theoretical analysis accurately describes two categories of recently discovered ``reversing spiral'' textures, ones that are energetically stable and metastable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9908393,
  title  = {Chiral hedgehog textures in 2D XY-like ordered domains},
  author = {Kok-Kiong Loh and Isabelle Kraus and Robert B. Meyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9908393},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures included, revised to include experimental findings which compares directly to theoretical results, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett