Related papers: Polydispersity stabilizes Biaxial Nematic Liquid C…
I show that two-dimensional nematic order in an active fluid film can be stable and long-ranged if exchange of particles and momentum with an ambient three-dimensional fluid is allowed. Number-conserving films present an instability, with a…
We study a disordered network of bistable bonds subjected to periodic strain. The model is inspired by experiments on crumpled sheets and it features behaviors associated with glasses, including a complex energy landscape, memories, and…
Nematic liquid crystals possess three different phases: isotropic, uniaxial, and biaxial. The ground state of most nematics is either isotropic or uniaxial, depending on the external temperature. Nevertheless, biaxial domains have been…
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,…
We study phase separation and transient gelation in a mixture consisting of polydisperse colloids and non-adsorbing polymers, where the ratio of the average size of the polymer to that of the colloid is approximately 0.063. Unlike what has…
Different liquid crystalline phases with long-range orientational but not positional order, so-called nematic phases, are scarce. It rarely occurs that a new nematic phase is discovered and such event is inevitably accompanied by a great…
We investigate the phase behavior of colloidal suspensions of board-like particles under the effect of an external field and assess the still disputed occurrence of the biaxial nematic (N$_\text{B}$) liquid crystal phase. The external field…
Liquid crystals consisting of biaxial particles can exhibit a much richer phase behavior than their uniaxial counterparts. Usually, one has to rely on simulation results to understand the phase diagram of these systems, since very few…
We consider a phenomenological continuum theory for an extensile, overdamped active nematic liquid crystal, applicable in the dense regime. Constructed from general principles, the theory is universal, with parameters independent of any…
We consider a simple Maier-Saupe statistical model with the inclusion of disorder degrees of freedom to mimic the phase diagram of a mixture of rod-like and disc-like molecules. A quenched distribution of shapes leads to the existence of a…
Specialized Monte Carlo simulation techniques and moment free energy method calculations, capable of treating fractionation exactly, are deployed to study the crystalline phase behaviour of an assembly of spherical particles described by a…
We apply density functional theory to study the influence of polydispersity on the stability of columnar, smectic and solid ordering in the solutions of rodlike macromolecules. For sufficiently large length polydispersity (standard…
Present work is a theoretical study on the stability of the thermotropic biaxial nematic liquid crystal phase in model systems. Its main aim is to present the phase diagrams of spatially uniform liquid mesophases and to identify the…
Biaxial nematic ($N_B$) liquid crystals have been indicated as promising candidates for the design of next-generation displays with novel electro-optical properties and faster switching times. While at the molecular scale their existence is…
Surface-induced liquid crystalline phase transitions evoke fundamental interest and can provide deeper insight into the nature of low-dimensional phase transitions. Board-like conjugated polymers are particularly interesting because they…
We study stability and distortions of liquid crystal nematic order in a cell with a random heterogeneous substrate. Modeling this system as a bulk xy model with quenched disorder confined to a surface, we find that nematic order is…
Phase sequences of the biaxial nematic liquid crystal in the interior of the essential triangle are studied with Wang Landau sampling. The evidence points to the existence of an intermediate unixial phase with low biaxiality in the…
The phase behavior of a model suspension of colloidal polydisperse platelets is studied using density-functional theory. Platelets are modelled as parallel rectangular prisms of square section $l$ and height $h$, with length and height…
We use linear stability analysis to show that an isotropic phase of elongated particles with dipolar flow fields can develop nematic order as a result of their activity. We argue that ordering is favoured if the particles are flow-aligning…
We introduce a minimal model for a collection of self-propelled apolar active particles, also called as `active nematic', on a two-dimensional substrate and study the order-disorder transition with the variation of density. The particles…