Related papers: Two-Dimensional Matter: Order, Curvature and Defec…
A liquid drop containing a long fiber is a complex system whose configuration is determined by an interplay of elastic stresses in the fiber and capillary forces due to the liquid. We study the morphological evolution of fibers that are…
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…
Topological phases of matter are ubiquitous in crystals, but less is known about their existence in amorphous systems, that lack long-range order. In this perspective, we review the recent progress made on theoretically defining amorphous…
Can a large system be fully characterized using its subsystems via inductive reasoning? Is it possible to completely reduce the behavior of a complex system to the behavior of its simplest "atoms"? In the following paper we answer these…
It is pointed out that quantum states, in general, contain a new kind of orders that cannot be characterized by symmetry. A concept of quantum order is introduced to describe such orders. As two concrete examples, we discussed quantum…
Topological defects are distinctive signatures of liquid crystals. They profoundly affect the viscoelastic behavior of the fluid by constraining the orientational structure in a way that inevitably requires global changes not achievable…
Ultracold atom arrays in optical lattices emerge as an excellent playground for the integration of topological photonics and quantum optics. Here, we study high-order topological quantum optics in an ultracold atom metasurface intended to…
Fluid mixtures, such as the cellular cytoplasm and synthetic DNA nanostars, can spontaneously compartmentalize into many coexisting phases through liquid-liquid phase separation. Despite the diversity of fluid structures that emerge from…
Understanding the geometry and topology of configuration or conformational spaces of molecules has relevant applications in chemistry and biology such as the proteins folding problem, drug design and the structure activity relationship…
Symmetry and topology are essential principles in topological physics. Recently, the idea of sub-symmetry-protected topology -- where some of the original symmetries are broken while a remaining subset, called sub-symmetries, continues to…
We show that back-flow, the coupling between the order parameter and the velocity fields, has a significant effect on the motion of defects in nematic liquid crystals. In particular the defect speed can depend strongly on the topological…
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…
For a long time, we thought that only symmetry breaking can give rise to different phases of matter. If there was no symmetry breaking, there would be no pattern and it would be featureless. But now we realize that, for quantum matter at…
There are three important types of structural properties that remain unchanged under the structural transformation of condensed matter physics and chemistry. They are the properties that remain unchanged under the structural periodic…
We propose a realization of a two-dimensional higher-order topological insulator with ultracold atoms loaded into orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of an optical lattice. The symmetries of the OAM states induce relative phases in the…
We describe experimental investigations of the structure of two-dimensional spherical crystals. The crystals, formed by beads self-assembled on water droplets in oil, serve as model systems for exploring very general theories about the…
The homotopy theory of topological defects in ordered media fails to completely characterize systems with broken translational symmetry. We argue that the problem can be understood in terms of the lack of rotational Goldstone modes in such…
A recurring motif in the organization of biological tissues are networks of long, fibrillar protein strands effectively confined to cylindrical surfaces. Often, the fibers in such curved, quasi-2D geometries adopt a characteristic order:…
Numerical simulations of phase ordering under dissipative dynamics in a (2+1)-dimensional 3-vector model with O(3) symmetry are reported. The energy functional includes terms which stabilize the size of extended topological defects. They…
From social interactions to the human brain, higher-order networks are key to describe the underlying network geometry and topology of many complex systems. While it is well known that network structure strongly affects its function, the…