Related papers: Theory and computation of directional nematic phas…
The phase-ordering kinetics of a bulk uniaxial nematic liquid crystal is addressed using techniques that have been successfully applied to describe ordering in the O(n) model. The method involves constructing an appropriate mapping between…
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…
We explore numerically the morphological patterns of thermo-diffusive instabilities in combustion fronts with a continuum fuel source, within a range of Lewis numbers and ignition temperatures, focusing on the cellular regime. For this…
Motivated by recently discovered unusual properties of bulk nematic elastomers, we study a phase diagram of liquid-crystalline polymerized phantom membranes, focusing on in-plane nematic order. We predict that such membranes should…
The nonequilibrium dynamics of the chiral phase transition expected during the expansion of the quark-qluon plasma produced in a high energy hadron or heavy ion collision is studied in the O(4) linear sigma model to leading order in a large…
We carry out Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the effect of molecular shape on liquid-crystal order. In our approach, each model mesogen consists of several soft spheres bonded rigidly together. The arrangement of the spheres may be…
Disclination configurations of a nematic liquid crystal are studied within a self-consistent molecular field theory. The theory is based on a tensor order parameter, and can accommodate anisotropic elastic energies without the known…
Using a version of density-functional theory which combines Onsager approximation and fundamental-measure theory for spatially nonuniform phases, we have studied the phase diagram of freely rotating hard rectangles and hard discorectangles.…
We propose an efficient numerical scheme, based on the method of lines, for solving the Landau-de Gennes equations describing the relaxational dynamics of nematic liquid crystals. Our method is computationally easy to implement, balancing…
At low temperatures, some lattice spin models with simple ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic interactions (for example nearest-neighbour interaction being isotropic in spin space on a bipartite three-dimensional lattice) produce…
In contrast to thermotropic biaxial nematic phases, for which some long sought for experimental realizations have been obtained, no experimental realizations are yet known for their tetrahedratic and cubatic counterparts,involving…
The properties of liquid crystals can be modelled using an order parameter which describes the variability of the local orientation of rod-like molecules. Defects in the director field can arise due to external factors such as applied…
We study the gradient flow model for the Landau-de Gennes energy functional for nematic liquid crystals at the nematic-isotropic transition temperature on prototype geometries. We study the dynamic model on a three-dimensional droplet and…
Phase separation of sequence-disordered liquid crystalline polymers, a promising class of technological and biological relevance, is studied by field theory, and thermodynamic mechanisms responsible for orientational ordering observed in…
We use nematic Multi-particle Collision Dynamics (N-MPCD) simulations to study confined nematic liquid crystals in square domains, with three distinct mean-field potentials: the classical Maier-Saupe and Marrucci-Greco models, and a more…
We consider a class of singularly perturbed 2-component reaction-diffusion equations which admit bistable traveling front solutions, manifesting as sharp, slow-fast-slow, interfaces between stable homogeneous rest states. In many example…
The cubic blue phases of liquid crystals are fascinating and technologically promising examples of hierarchically structured soft materials, comprising ordered networks of defect lines (disclinations) within a liquid crystalline matrix. We…
A theoretical study of toroidal membranes with various degrees of intrinsic orientational order is presented at mean-field level. The study uses a simple Ginzburg-Landau style free energy functional, which gives rise to a rich variety of…
Modeling and simulation studies using a high-order Landau-de Gennes type model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystal transition are presented showing the existence of meta-stable nematic pre-ordering under certain conditions, in…
Studies of the copper-based superconductors demonstrate how their phase diagram becomes more complex as experimental probes improve, able to distinguish among subtly different electronic phases. One of those phases, nematicity, has become…