Related papers: Disclination Loops, Hedgehogs, and All That
The motion of topological defects is an important feature of the dynamics of all liquid crystals, and is especially conspicuous in active liquid crystals. Understanding defect motion is a challenging theoretical problem, because the…
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…
The study of topology in solids is undergoing a renaissance following renewed interest in the properties of ferroic domain walls as well as recent discoveries regarding topological insulators and skyrmionic lattices. Each of these systems…
Defects are a ubiquitous feature of ordered media. They have certain universal features, independent of the underlying physical system, reflecting their topological origins. While the topological properties of defects are robust, they…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…
From the theory of topological defect formation proposed for the early universe, the so called Kibble mechanism, it follows that the density correlation functions of defects and anti-defects in a given system should be completely determined…
Topological metals are special conducting materials with gapless band structures and nontrivial edge-localized resonances, whose discovery has proved elusive because the traditional topological classification methods do not apply in this…
Complexes and cohomology, traditionally central to topology, have emerged as fundamental tools across applied mathematics and the sciences. This survey explores their roles in diverse areas, from partial differential equations and continuum…
Topological defects play a central role in the formation and organization of various biological systems. Historically, such nonequilibrium defects have been mainly studied in the context of homogeneous active nematics. Phase-separated…
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…
Topological materials have become the focus of intense research in recent years, since they exhibit fundamentally new physical phenomena with potential applications for novel devices and quantum information technology. One of the hallmarks…
Topological defects are singularities in material fields that play a vital role across a range of systems: from cosmic microwave background polarization to superconductors, and biological materials. Although topological defects and their…
Crystalline assemblages of identical sub-units packed together and elastically bent in the form of a torus have been found in the past ten years in a variety of systems of surprisingly different nature, such as viral capsids, self-assembled…
Crystalline symmetries give rise to topological invariants that can distinguish quantum phases of matter. Understanding these in strongly interacting systems is an ongoing research direction requiring non-perturbative methods. Recent…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
The interplay of nonlinearity and topology results in many novel and emergent properties across a number of physical systems such as chiral magnets, nematic liquid crystals, Bose-Einstein condensates, photonics, high energy physics, etc. It…
We present a unified framework to systematically embed complex knotted and linked structures, beyond the torus family, into diverse topological phases, including Hopf insulators, classical spin liquids, topological semimetals, and…