Related papers: Effective free energy method for nematic liquid cr…
A nematic liquid-crystal cell subject to an electric field created by electrodes held at constant potential is modeled as a variable capacitor in an RC circuit. The state of the system is characterized in terms of the director field in the…
We consider a Landau-de Gennes model for a suspension of small colloidal inclusions in a nematic host. We impose suitable anchoring conditions at the boundary of the inclusions, and we work in the dilute regime - i.e., the size of the…
Here we discuss the free energy of nematic liquid crystals using two vectors and the helicity, with the aim of having a compact form of its density. The two vectors are due to the splay and bend distortions of the director field. They have…
We present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
Using novel micro-printing techniques, we develop a versatile experimental setup that allows us to study how lateral confinement tames the active flows and defect properties of the microtubule/kinesin active nematic system. We demonstrate…
We develop a formal analogy between configurational stresses in two distinct physical systems, and study the flows that they induce when the configurations of interest include topological de- fects. The two systems in question are…
We provide a minimal model for an active nematic film in contact with both a solid substrate and a passive isotropic fluid, and explore its dynamics in one and two dimensions using a combination of hybrid Lattice Boltzmann simulations and…
Active liquid crystals or active gels are soft materials which can be physically realised e.g. by preparing a solution of cytoskeletal filaments interacting with molecular motors. We study the hydrodynamics of an active liquid crystal in a…
In this review we focus on the determination of phase diagrams by computer simulation with particular attention to the fluid-solid and solid-solid equilibria. The calculation of the free energy of solid phases using the Einstein crystal and…
We consider the simplest one-constant model, put forward by J. Ericksen, for nematic liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation. The equilibrium state is described by a director field $\mathbf{n}$ and its degree of orientation $s$,…
We analyze an elastic surface energy which was recently introduced by G. Napoli and L.Vergori to model thin films of nematic liquid crystals. We show how a novel approach that takes into account also the extrinsic properties of the surfaces…
We study the phase behavior of hard spheres confined between two parallel hard plates using extensive computer simulations. We determine the full equilibrium phase diagram for arbitrary densities and plate separations from one to five…
We have identified the ground state configurations of soft particles (interacting via inverse power potentials) confined between two hard, impenetrable walls. To this end we have used a highly reliable optimization scheme at {\it vanishing}…
In this paper, a Freedericksz-like positional transition is found for a spherical micro-droplet suspended in a nematic liquid crystal cell in the presence of an external electric field. Based on the numerical calculation of elastic energy…
A melting transition for a system of hard spheres interacting by a repulsive Yukawa potential of DLVO form is studied. To find the location of the phase boundary, we propose a simple theory to calculate the free energies for the coexisting…
The Landau-de Gennes free energy is used to study theoretically the effective interaction of a spherical "key" and an anisotropic "lock" colloidal particles. We assume identical anchoring properties of the surfaces of the key and of the…
Motivated by the need for greater understanding of systems that involve interfaces between a nematic liquid crystal, a solid substrate, and a passive gas that includes nematic--substrate--gas three-phase contact lines, we analyse a…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of liquid-crystalline material confined to a nanoscopic slit-pore. The simulations are carried out under isothermal conditions in a specialized isostress ensemble in which N fluid molecules are exposed to…
We consider a class of liquid crystal free-boundary problems for which both the equilibrium shape and internal configuration of a system must simultaneously be determined, for example in films with air- or fluid-liquid crystal interfaces…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…