Related papers: The Smectic $A$-$C$ Phase Transition in Biaxial Di…
We investigate experimentally the dynamic phase transition of a two-dimensional active nematic layer interfaced with a passive liquid crystal. Under a temperature ramp that leads to the transition of the passive liquid into a highly…
We study the layer-to-layer diffusion in smectic-A liquid crystals of colloidal hard rods with different length-to-diameter ratios using computer simulations. The layered arrangement of the smectic phase yields a hopping-type diffusion due…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…
We consider the influence of quenched spatial disorder on phase transitions in classical and quantum systems. We show that rare strong disorder fluctuations can have dramatic effects on critical points. In classical systems with…
Influence of an external magnetic field on the nematic-isotropic ($N-I$) phase transition in a dispersion model of nematic liquid crystals, where the molecules are either perfectly uniaxial or biaxial (board-like), has been studied by Monte…
We explore spatial symmetry breaking of a dipolar Bose Einstein condensate in the thermodynamic limit and reveal a critical point in the phase diagram at which crystallization occurs via a second order phase transition. This behavior is…
We report the results of high frequency acoustic shear impedance measurement on superfluid helium-3 confined in 98% porosity silica aerogel. Using 8.69 MHz continuous wave excitation, we measured the acoustic shear impedance as a function…
We find a possibility of a weak universality of spin-glass phase transitions in three-dimensional $\pm J$ models. The Ising, the XY and the Heisenberg models seem to undergo finite-temperature phase transitions with a ratio of the critical…
Jamming transition is traditionally regarded as a geometric transition governed by static contact networks. Recently, dynamic phase transitions of athermal particles under periodic shearing provide a new lens on this problem, leading to a…
Using large-scale simulations based on matrix product state and quantum Monte Carlo techniques, we study the superfluid to Bose glass-transition for one-dimensional attractive hard-core bosons at zero temperature, across the full regime…
In a type II superconductor in a moderate magnetic field, the superconductor to normal state transition may be described as a phase transition in which the vortex lattice melts into a liquid. In a biaxial superconductor, or even a uniaxial…
The low-energy limits of models with disorder are frequently described by sigma models. In two dimensions, most sigma models admit either a Wess-Zumino-Witten or a theta term. When such a term is present the model can have a stable critical…
We study the kinetics of the isotropic-smectic phase transition in a colloidal rod/polymer mixture by visualizing individual smectic layers. First, we show that the bulk isotropic-smectic phase transition is preceded by a surface freezing…
We probe the transition between superfluid and Bose glass phases using quantum quenches of disorder in an ultracold atomic lattice gas that realizes the disordered Bose-Hubbard model. Measurements of excitations generated by the quench…
Molecular arrangement in the chiral smectic phases of the glassforming (S)-4'-(1-methylheptylcarbonyl)biphenyl-4-yl 4-[7-(2,2,3,3,4,4,4-heptafluorobutoxy) heptyl-1-oxy]benzoate is investigated by X-ray diffraction. An increased correlation…
The existence of phase-separated states is an essential feature of infinite-volume systems with a thermal, first-order phase transition. At energies between those at which the phase transition takes place, equilibrium homogeneous states are…
In periodically sheared suspensions there is a dynamical phase transition characterized by a critical strain amplitude $\gamma_c$ between an absorbing state where particle trajectories are reversible and an active state where trajectories…
An unresolved issue in the theory of liquid crystals is the molecular basis of the electroclinic effect in the smectic-A phase. Recent x-ray scattering experiments suggest that, in a class of siloxane-containing liquid crystals, an electric…
We once more specify an universality of a phase transition from smectic-A to nematic phase in the crosslinked polymer network with a smectic liquid crystal, basing on the X-ray and $^1H$-NMR spectroscopy experiments. Comparing the…
We consider the stationary state of a fluid comprised of inelastic hard spheres or disks under the influence of a random, momentum-conserving external force. Starting from the microscopic description of the dynamics, we derive a nonlinear…