Related papers: Switching and defect dynamics in multistable liqui…
We study the switching dynamics in two-domain and four-domain twisted nematic liquid crystal devices. The equilibrium configuration of these devices involves the coexistence of regions characterised by different handedness of the inherent…
We report on a novel method of dynamically controlling the boundary conditions at the surface of a nematic liquid crystal using a surface flexoelectric effect. By moving the surface directors we show that one is able to manipulate defects…
In this work we numerically study the switching dynamics of a 2D cholesteric emulsion droplet immersed in an isotropic fluid under an electric field, which is either uniform or rotating with constant speed. The overall dynamics depend…
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 formulate a lattice Boltzmann algorithm which solves the hydrodynamic equations of motion for nematic liquid crystals. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated by presenting results for two liquid crystal devices where flow has…
Here we study theoretically the dynamics of a 2D and a 3D isotropic droplet in a nematic liquid crystal under a shear flow. We find a large repertoire of possible nonequilibrium steady states as a function of the shear rate and of the…
Multistability is an inseparable feature of many physical, chemical and biological systems which are driven far from equilibrium. In these nonequilibrium systems, stochastic dynamics often induces switching between distinct states on…
Instabilities of fluid-fluid interfaces are ubiquitous in passive soft matter. Adding activity to the interface or either fluid can dramatically change the stability of the interface. Using experiment and theory, we investigate the…
We study spreading dynamics of nematic liquid crystal droplets within the framework of the long-wave approximation. A fourth order nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation governing the free surface evolution is derived. The…
We study the kinetics of the nematic-isotropic transition in a two-dimensional liquid crystal by using a lattice Boltzmann scheme that couples the tensor order parameter and the flow consistently. Unlike in previous studies, we find the…
Dynamical structural defects exist naturally in a wide variety of solids. They fluctuate temporally, and hence can deteriorate the performance of many electronic devices. Thus far, the entities of such dynamic objects have been identified…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
Nematic liquid-crystal devices are a powerful tool to structure light in different degrees of freedom, both in classical and quantum regimes. Most of these devices exploit either the possibility of introducing a position-dependent phase…
Cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit great morphological richness of static metastable states. Understanding the transitions between such states is key for the development of switchable devices. We show, using a quasi-one-dimensional model,…
A nematic liquid crystal in contact with a grating surface possessing an alternating stripe pattern of locally homeotropic and planar anchoring is studied within the Frank--Oseen model. The combination of both chemical and geometrical…
Stability is a key property of dynamical systems. In some cases, we want to change unstable system into stable one to achieve certain goals in engineering. Here, we present an example of a $3$ dimensional switched system that alternates…
When a nematic liquid crystal is confined in a porous medium with strong anchoring conditions, topological defects, called disclinations, are stably formed with numerous possible configurations. Since the energy barriers between them are…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
We demonstrate that one-dimensional photonic crystals with pure nematic liquid-crystal defects can operate as all-optical switching devices based on optical orientational nonlinearities of liquid crystals. We show that such a periodic…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…