Related papers: Elastic Theory of Defects in Toroidal Crystals
The problem of characterizing the structure of an elastic network constrained to lie on a frozen curved surface appears in many areas of science and has been addressed by many different approaches, most notably, extending linear elasticity…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
Using tools and concepts from contact topology we show that non-vanishing twist implies conservation of the layer structure in cholesteric liquid crystals. This leads to a number of additional topological invariants for cholesteric…
We study the relationship between topological defect formation and ground-state packings in a model of repulsions in external confining potentials. Specifically we consider screened 2D Coulombic repulsions, which conveniently parameterizes…
Topological defects are an essential part of the structure and dynamics of all liquid crystals, and they are particularly important in experiments and simulations on active liquid crystals. In a recent paper, Vromans and Giomi [Soft Matter,…
Lattice defects in crystalline materials create long-range elastic fields which can be modelled on the atomistic scale using an infinite system of discrete nonlinear force balance equations. Starting with these equations, this work…
Because of the inevitably disordered background, structural defects are not well-defined concepts in amorphous solids. In order to overcome this difficulty, it has been recently proposed that topological defects can be still identified in…
The ground state of twist-bend nematic liquid crystals is a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the nematic director precesses uniformly about an axis, making a fixed angle with it. Both precession senses are allowed in the ground…
Charged colloidal crystals exhibit a subtle interplay between electrostatic screening and elastic deformation. In an anisotropic elastic medium the coupling between dilation and the local ionic environment becomes direction dependent,…
We study the dynamics of topological defects in continuum theories governed by a free energy minimization principle, building on our recently developed framework [Romano J, Mahault B and Golestanian R 2023 J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp.…
We develop the elastic theory for inversion-asymmetric tethered membranes and use it to identify and study their possible phases. Asymmetry in a tethered membrane causes spontaneous curvature, which in general depends upon the local…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
Several experiments have demonstrated the existence of an electro-mechanical effect in many biological tissues and hydrogels, and its actual influence on growth, migration, and pattern formation. Here, to model these interactions and…
We show that nonlinear continuum elasticity can be effective in modeling plastic flows in crystals if it is viewed as Landau theory with an infinite number of equivalent energy wells whose configuration is dictated by the symmetry group…
Using the Jones matrix formalism, crystal optical properties of inhomogeneous material consisting of a pile of weakly birefringent plates are analysed in relation to the cell model adopted in polarization tomography of 3D dielectric tensor…
Crystallization of dense matter in neutron star crusts and white dwarf cores may be similar to epitaxial crystal growth in terrestrial laboratories. However in stellar crystals, the spacing between horizontal planes has to gradually…
Toroidal nematics are droplets of nematic liquid crystals in the form of a circular torus. When the nematic director is subject to planar degenerate boundary conditions, the bend-only director field with vector lines along the parallels of…
The foundation of continuum elasticity theory is based on two general principles: (i) the force felt by a small volume element from its surrounding acts only through its surface (the Cauchy principle, justified by the fact that interactions…
A generalised Wulf-Kaishew theorem is given describing the equilibrium shape (ES) of an isolated 3D crystal A deposited coherently onto a lattice mismatched planar substrate. For this purpose a free polyhedral crystal is formed then…
The twist-bend nematic phase, $N_{\rm TB}$, may be viewed as a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the director $\bf n$ precesses uniformly about an extra director field, $\bf t$. It corresponds to a nematic ground state exhibiting…