Related papers: The Surface Electroclinic Effect near the First Or…
We present a theory of the elasticity and fluctuations of the Smectic A and C phases in uniaxial, anisotropic disordered environments, e.g., stretched aerogel. We find that, bizarrely, the low-temperature, lower-symmetry Smectic $C$ phase…
Effects of superconducting fluctuation (SCF) on thermodynamic properties of electron systems in the so-called BCS-BEC-crossover regime are studied. As the attractive interaction between electrons becomes stronger upon approaching the…
The influence of surface enhanced covalency on the Madelung potential is experimentally investigated using angle-resolved photoemission for (100), (110) and (111) SrTiO$_3$ surfaces after annealing in UHV at 630 {\deg}C. Deconvolution of…
One of central issues in iron-based superconductors is the role of structural change to the superconducting transition temperature (T_c). It was found in FeSe that the lattice strain leads to a drastic increase in T_c, accompanied by…
The short-range order which remains when the isotropic to smectic-A transition is perturbed by a gel of silica nanoparticles (aerosils) has been studied using high-resolution synchrotron x-ray diffraction. The gels have been created…
We propose a Landau-de Gennes phenomenological model to describe the pressure induced smectic A-nematic phase transition. The pressure induced smectic A phase transitions are discussed for varying coupling between orientational and…
Non-Hermitian physics has unveiled unconventional spectral, topological and critical phenomena, challenging traditional band theories. This thesis advances its understanding in three aspects. First, the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) is…
Experimental and theoretical studies of a smectic-hexatic transition in freely suspended films of 54COOBC compound are presented. X-ray investigations revealed a discontinuous first-order transition into the hexatic phase. Moreover, the…
The spontaneous Hall effect (SHE), a finite voltage occurring transversal to the electrical current in zero-magnetic field, has been observed in both conventional and unconventional superconductors, appearing as a peak near the…
The electric field applied perpendicularly to smectic layers breaks the rotational symmetry of the system. Consequently, the elastic energy associated with distortions induced by an edge dislocation diverges logarithmically with the size of…
When electrons are subject to a large external magnetic field, the conventional charge quantum Hall effect \cite{Klitzing,Tsui} dictates that an electronic excitation gap is generated in the sample bulk, but metallic conduction is permitted…
We describe magneto-, baro- and elastocaloric effects (MCEs, BCEs and eCEs) in materials which possess both discontinuous (first-order) and continuous (second-order) magnetic phase transitions. Our ab initio theory of the interacting…
Due to fundamental interest and potential applications in quantum computation, tremendous efforts have been invested to study topological superconductivity. However, bulk topological superconductivity seems to be difficult to realize and…
The structure of the electron quantum size levels in spherical nanocrystals is studied in the framework of an eight--band effective mass model at zero and weak magnetic fields. The effect of the nanocrystal surface is modeled through the…
Chiral liquid crystals often exhibit periodic modulations in the molecular director; in particular, thin films of the smectic-C* phase show a chiral striped texture. Here, we investigate whether similar chiral modulations can occur in the…
Magnetic refrigeration based on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of materials is a potential technique that has prominet advantages over the currently used gas compression-expansion technique in the sense of its high efficiency and…
The critical behavior of the semi-infinite Blume-Capel and Blume-Emery-Griffiths models is investigated in the pair approximation of the Cluster Variation Method. Equations for bulk and surface order parameters and n.n. correlation…
Under an electric field, chiral smectic liquid crystals transit usually to the unwound SmC* phase where the helical structure is completely unrolled. Sometimes the sample transits initially towards an intermediate polar state before the…
A systematic analysis of thermodynamic properties performed on Ce-base exemplary compounds allows to identify different types of behaviors as the system approaches the quantum critical region. They are recognized in the respective magnetic…
Using the previously developed model we study the electrocaloric effect (ECE) in antiferroelectric crystals of squaric acid. At low temperatures, the polarization reorientation by the electric field applied along the crystallographic $a$…