Related papers: Two-Dimensional Matter: Order, Curvature and Defec…
Surfaces are at the frontier of every known solid. They provide versatile supports for functional nanostructures and mediate essential physicochemical processes. Being intimately related with 2D materials, interfaces and atomically thin…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
When thermal energies are weak, two dimensional lamellar structures confined on a curved substrate display complex patterns arising from the competition between layer bending and compression in the presence of geometric constraints. We…
Understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind plastic instabilities and shear band formation in amorphous media under applied deformation remains a long-standing challenge. Leveraging on the mathematical concept of topology, we revisit…
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,…
Spontaneous onset of a low temperature topologically ordered phase in a 2-dimensional (2D) lattice model of uniaxial liquid crystal (LC) was debated extensively pointing to a suspected underlying mechanism affecting the RG flow near the…
The surface curvature of membranes, interfaces, and substrates plays a crucial role in shaping the self-assembly of particles adsorbed on these surfaces. However, little is known about the interplay between particle anisotropy and surface…
Topological quantum materials hold great promise for future technological applications. Their unique electronic properties, such as protected surface states and exotic quasiparticles, offer opportunities for designing novel electronic…
There are two prominent applications of the mathematical concept of topology to the physics of materials: band topology, which classifies different topological insulators and semimetals, and topological defects that represent immutable…
Smectic order on arbitrary curved substrate can be described by a differential form of rank one (1-form), whose geometric meaning is the differential of the local phase field of the density modulation. The exterior derivative of 1-form is…
Self-assembly of ordered nanometer-scale patterns is interesting in itself, but its practical value depends on the ability to predict and control pattern formation. In this paper we demonstrate theoretically and numerically that engineering…
How topological defects affect the dynamics of particles hopping between lattice sites of a distorted, two-dimensional crystal is addressed. Perturbation theory and numerical simulations show that weak, short-ranged topological disorder…
Collective guidance of out-of-equilibrium systems without using external fields is a challenge of paramount importance in active matter, ranging from bacterial colonies to swarms of self-propelled particles. Designing strategies to guide…
The formation and dynamics of a wide variety of binary two-dimensional ordered structures and superlattices are investigated through a phase field crystal model with sublattice ordering. Various types of binary ordered phases, the phase…
Amorphous solids show surprisingly universal behaviour at low temperatures. The prevailing wisdom is that this can be explained by the existence of two-state defects within the material. The so-called standard tunneling model has become the…
Disordered hyperuniform many-particle systems have attracted considerable recent attention. One important class of such systems is the classical ground states of "stealthy potentials." The degree of order of such ground states depends on a…
Topological defects are crucial to the thermodynamics and structure of condensed matter systems. For instance, when incorporated into crystalline membranes like graphene, disclinations with positive and negative topological charge…
Topological defects play a prominent role in the physics of two-dimensional materials. When driven out of equilibrium in active nematics, disclinations can acquire spontaneous self-propulsion and drive self-sustained flows upon…
The order parameter of the smectic liquid crystal phase is the same as that of a superfluid or superconductor, namely a complex scalar field. We show that the essential difference in boundary conditions between these systems leads to a…
In primary school, we were told that there are four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. In college, we learned that there are much more than four states of matter. For example, there are ferromagnetic states as revealed by the…