Related papers: Continuous Crystallization in Hexagonally-Ordered …
The addition of uniaxial random fields to the XY model induces an order-by disorder transition, in which the XY magnet develops a spontaneous magnetization in the direction perpendicular to the uniaxial random field. Here, we use…
Plasticity in amorphous solids is mediated by localized quadrupolar instabilities, but the mechanism by which an amorphous solid eventually fails or melts is debated. In this work we argue that these phenomena can be investigated in the…
We study a continuous quasi-two-dimensional order-disorder phase transition that occurs in a simple model of a material that is inhomogeneously strained due to the presence of dislocation lines. Performing Monte Carlo simulations of…
Creep experiments on polycrystalline surfactant hexagonal columnar phases show a power law regime, followed by a drastic fluidization before reaching a final stationary flow. The scaling of the fluidization time with the shear modulus of…
We study the smectic $A$-$C$ phase transition in biaxial disordered environments, e.g. fully anisotropic aerogel. We find that both the $A$ and $C$ phases belong to the universality class of the "XY Bragg glass", and therefore have…
Inspired by Conti and Zanzotto \cite{Conti2004A}, we reformulate a simple variational model for reconstructive phase transitions in crystals arising in continuum mechanics in the framework of Landau's theory of phase transition(with slight…
We study the dynamics of small fluctuations about the uniform state of a crystal moving through a dissipative medium, e.g. a sedimenting colloidal crystal or a moving flux lattice, using a set of continuum equations for the displacement…
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
Emergent crystals are periodic alignment of "emergent particles", i.e., localized collective behavior of atoms or their charges/spins/orbits. These novel states of matter, widely observed in various systems, may deform under mechanical…
Investigating thermodynamic properties of liquid-solid transitions of flexible homopolymers with elastic bonds by means of multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, we find crystalline conformations that resemble ground-state structures of…
Using positional data from video-microscopy of a two-dimensional colloidal system and from simulations of hard discs we determine the wave-vector-dependent normal mode spring constants in the supercooled fluid and glassy state,…
We explore spatial symmetry breaking of a dipolar Bose Einstein condensate in the thermodynamic limit and reveal a critical point in the phase diagram at which crystallization occurs via a second order phase transition. This behavior is…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
We propose that extended orientational correlations can appear at the surface of supercooled heavy noble liquid metals, due to the same compressive forces that cause reconstruction of their crystal surfaces. Simulations for liquid Au show a…
We study the effect of thermal fluctuations in the XY-model on a surface with non vanishing mean curvature and zero Gaussian curvature. Unlike Gaussian curvature that typically frustrates orientational order, the extrinsic curvature of the…
We analyze the nucleation of supersolid order out of the superfluid ground state of bosons on the triangular lattice. While the stability of supersolidity against phase separation in this system is by now well established for…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
A wide range of disordered materials, from biological to geological assemblies, feature discrete elements undergoing large shape changes. How significant geometrical variations at the microscopic scale affect the response of the assembly,…
We develop a real space renormalisation group analysis of disordered models of glasses, in particular of the spin models at the origin of the Random First Order Transition theory. We find three fixed points respectively associated to the…
We study incompressible systems of motile particles with alignment interactions. Unlike their compressible counterparts, in which the order-disorder (i.e., moving to static) transition, tuned by either noise or number density, is…