Related papers: Elasticity of smectic liquid crystals with focal c…
Focal conic domains (FCDs) in smectic-A liquid crystals have drawn much attention both for their exquisitely structured internal form and for their ability to direct the assembly of micro- and nanomaterials in a variety of patterns. A key…
We report studies of the frequency dependent shear modulus, $G^*(\omega)=G'(\omega)+iG''(\omega)$, of the liquid crystal octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) confined in a colloidal aerosil gel. With the onset of smectic order, $G'$ grows approximately…
In twist-bend nematic (N\textsubscript{TB}) liquid crystals (LCs), the mean molecular orientation exhibits heliconical structure with nanoscale periodicity. On the mesoscopic scale, N\textsubscript{TB} resembles layered systems (like…
Smectic liquid crystals vividly illustrate the subtle interplay of broken translational and orientational symmetries, by exhibiting defect structures forming geometrically perfect confocal ellipses and hyperbolas. Here, we develop and…
Elongated colloidal rods at sufficient packing conditions are known to form stable lamellar or smectic phases. Using a simplified volume-exclusion model, we propose a generic equation-of-state for hard-rod smectics that is robust against…
We study elastic properties of solid Yukawa systems. Elastic moduli and effective shear modulus of body-centered cubic (bcc) and face-centered cubic (fcc) lattices are obtained from electrostatic energies of deformed crystals. For the bcc…
We investigate the phase behaviour of a two-dimensional colloidal model system of ultra-soft particles on a substrate which varies periodically along one spatial direction. Our calculations are based on mean-field density functional theory…
We investigate theoretically the elliptical shapes of soft colloids in freely standing smectic C films, that have been reported recently. The colloids favour parallel alignment of the liquid crystal molecules at their surfaces and, for…
A dynamic light scattering study of director-layer fluctuations in the antiferroelectric smectic-ZA phase of the ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal DIO is reported. The dynamics are consistent with the distinctive feature of the ZA phase…
Dilute oil dispersions of fractal carbon black particles with attractive Van der Waals interactions display continuous shear thickening followed by shear thinning at high shear rates. The shear thickening transition occurs at…
Elastic properties play an important role in neutron stars and white dwarfs. They are crucial for modeling stellar oscillations and different processes in magnetars and in degenerate stars which enter compact binary systems. Using…
We present a phase-field crystal (PFC) model for solidification that accounts for thermal transport and a temperature-dependent lattice parameter. Elasticity effects are characterized through the continuous elastic field computed from the…
Crystallization of dense matter in neutron star crusts and white dwarf cores may be similar to epitaxial crystal growth in terrestrial laboratories. However in stellar crystals, the spacing between horizontal planes has to gradually…
Liquid crystals offer many unique opportunities to study various phase transitions with continuous symmetry in the presence of quenched random disorder (QRD). The QRD arises from the presence of porous solids in the form of a random gel…
Using the density functional formalism we derive expression for the distortion free energy for systems with continuous broken symmetry and use it to derive expression for the elastic constants of smectic phases in which director is tilted…
The scaling of the shear modulus near the gelation/vulcanization transition is explored heuristically and analytically. It is found that in a dense melt the effective chains of the infinite cluster have sizes that scale sub-linearly with…
Chiral rodlike colloids exposed to strong depletion attraction may self-assemble into chiral membranes whose twisted director field differs from that of a 3D bulk chiral nematic. We formulate a simple microscopic variational theory to…
We present a theory for the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft smectic-C elastomers with locked-in smectic layers. Our theory, which goes beyond pure hydrodynamics, predicts a dynamic soft elasticity of these elastomers and…
New theoretical approaches have been developed for studying and quantitatively describing the elastic properties of cubic blue phases in cholesteric liquid crystals. Within the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory, using the simplest…
We show how the periodicity of 180^{o} domains as a function of crystal thickness scales with the thickness of the domain walls both for ferroelectric and for ferromagnetic materials. We derive an analytical expression for the universal…