Related papers: Texture and shape of two-dimensional domains of ne…
The uniform director field obtained for the nematic ground state of the hard-rod model of liquid crystals in two dimensions reflects the high symmetry of the constituents of the liquid; It is a manifestation of the constituents' local…
The director configuration of disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external magnetic field is evaluated. Our method is a combination of a polynomial expansion for the director and of further analytical…
We derive a F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n-type constitutive model for solid liquid crystalline plates where the nematic director may or may not rotate freely relative to the elastic network. To obtain the reduced two-dimensional model, we…
A two-dimensional or quasi-two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal refers to a surface confined system. When such a system is further confined by external line boundaries or excluded from internal line boundaries, the nematic directors form…
Lipid vesicles composed of a mixture of two types of lipids are studied by intensive Monte-Carlo numerical simulations. The coupling between the local composition and the membrane shape is induced by two different spontaneous curvatures of…
Aqueous dispersions of exfoliated, bile-salt stabilized single-wall carbon nanotubes exhibit a first order transition to a nematic liquid-crystalline phase. The nematic phase presents itself in the form of micron-sized nematic droplets also…
One objective of active matter science is to unveil principles by which chaotic microscale dynamics could be transformed into useful work. A nematic liquid crystal environment offers a number of possibilities, one of which is a directional…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
The recent discovery of the ferroelectric splay nematic phase has opened the door to experimental investigation of one of the most searched liquid crystal phases in decades, with high expectations for future applications. However, at this…
Disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals can exist in different geometric conformations, characterised by their director profile. In certain confined, colloidal and even more prominently in chiral nematics, the director profile may…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
Recent experiments have reported a novel splay nematic phase, which has alternating domains of positive and negative splay. To model this phase, previous studies have considered a 1D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a…
Much recent progress has been made in the study of nematic solids, both glassy and elastomeric, particularly in the realm of stress-free, defect-driven deformation in thin sheets of material. In this paper we consider a subset of texture…
We obtain complete topological classification of states of nematic liquid crystal in the geometry of periodic array of rectangular posts between two parallel slabs, with tangent or normal boundary conditions. This classification has…
From incompressible flows to electrostatics, harmonic functions can provide solutions to many two-dimensional problems and, similarly, the director field of a planar nematic can be determined using complex analysis. We derive a closed-form…
Based on static and dynamical density functional theory, a phase-field-crystal model is derived which involves both the translational density and the orientational degree of ordering as well as a local director field. The model exhibits…
Tactoids are pointed, spindle-like droplets of nematic liquid crystal in an isotropic fluid. They have long been observed in inorganic and organic nematics, in thermotropic phases as well as lyotropic colloidal aggregates. The variational…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
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…
Here we study theoretically the dynamics of a 2D and a 3D isotropic droplet in a nematic liquid crystal under a shear flow. We find a large repertoire of possible nonequilibrium steady states as a function of the shear rate and of the…