Related papers: Liquid crystal cells with "dirty" substrates
We studied interplay between kinetic roughening and phase ordering in 1+1 dimensional single-step solid-on-solid growth model with two kinds of particles and Ising-like interaction. Evolution of both geometrical and compositional properties…
We consider a liquid drop sitting on a rough solid surface at equilibrium, a volume constrained minimizer of the total interfacial energy. The large-scale shape of such a drop strongly depends on the micro-structure of the solid surface.…
Structure-property relationships in ordered materials have long been a core principle in materials design. However, the intentional introduction of disorder into materials provides structural flexibility and thus access to material…
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
Impurities in crystalline materials introduce disorder into an otherwise ordered structure due to the formation of lattice defects and grain boundaries. The properties of the resulting polycrystal can differ remarkably from those of the…
A slender thread of elastic hydrogel is susceptible to a surface instability that is reminiscent of the classical Rayleigh-Plateau instability of liquid jets. The final, highly nonlinear states that are observed in experiments arise from a…
We demonstrate a variety of ordered patterns, including hexagonal structures and chains, formed by colloidal particles (droplets) at the free surface of a nematic liquid crystal (LC). The surface placement introduces a new type of particle…
Colloids are abundant in nature, science and technology, with examples ranging from milk to quantum dots and the "colloidal atom" paradigm. Similarly, liquid crystal ordering is important in contexts ranging from biological membranes to…
After a brief introduction to several variational problems in the study of shapes of thin thickness structures, we deal with variational problems on 2-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional Euclidian space by using exterior differential…
Discrete rearranging patterns include cellular patterns, for instance liquid foams, biological tissues, grains in polycrystals; assemblies of particles such as beads, granular materials, colloids, molecules, atoms; and interconnected…
We have performed Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the temperature dependence of the ordering of the side chains of the X-shape liquid crystal molecules which are arranged in a hexagonal array. Each hexagon contains six side chains,…
Mobility properties inside and around degenerate domains of an elastic lattice partially pinned on a square array of traps are explored by means of a fully controllable model system of macroscopic particles. We focus on the different…
We perform a general study of spin ordering on the pyrochlore lattice with a 3:1 proportionality of two spin polarizations. Equivalently, this describes valence bond solid conformations of a quantum dimer model on the diamond lattice. We…
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…
Frictional phenomena of two-dimensional elastic lattices are studied numerically based on a two-dimensional Frenkel-Kontorova model with impurities. It is shown that impurities can assist the depinning. We also investigate anisotropic…
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…
Using Monte Carlo simulations of the Lebwohl--Lasher model we study the director ordering in a nematic cell where the top and bottom surfaces are patterned with a lattice of $\pm 1$ point topological defects of lattice spacing $a$. We find…
Crystals are a state of matter characterised by periodic order. Yet crystalline materials can harbour disorder in many guises, such as non-repeating variations in composition, atom displacements, bonding arrangements, molecular…
We use a random pinning procedure to study amorphous order in two glassy spin models. On increasing the concentration of pinned spins at constant temperature, we find a sharp crossover (but no thermodynamic phase transition) from bulk…
Liquid crystals with molecules constrained to the tangent bundle of a curved surface show interesting phenomena resulting from the tight coupling of the elastic and bulk free energies of the liquid crystal with geometric properties of the…