Related papers: Smectic order, pinning, and phase transition in a …
In the absence of disorder, electrons can display glassy behavior through supercooling the liquid state, avoiding the solidification into a charge ordered state. Such supercooled electron liquids are experimentally found in organic…
We report results of computer simulations of two-dimensional hard disks confined within a quasi one-dimensional ``hard-wall'' channel, a few atomic radii wide. Starting from a commensurate triangular solid a rescaling of the system size…
We report on X-ray studies of freely suspended hexatic films of three different liquid crystal compounds. By applying angular X-ray cross-correlation analysis (XCCA) to the measured diffraction patterns the parameters of the…
The single layered manganite Pr$_{0.22}$Sr$_{1.78}$MnO$_4$ undergoes structural transition from high temperature tetragonal phase to low temperature orthorhombic phase below room temperature. The orthorhombic phase was reported to have two…
Recent experiments on the two dimensional electron gas in various semiconductor devices have revealed an unexpected metal-insulator transition and have challenged the previously held assumption that there is no such transition in two…
We use molecular-dynamics computer simulations to study the translational and reorientational dynamics of a glass-forming liquid of dumbbells. For sufficiently elongated molecules the standard strong steric hindrance scenario for the…
We study the effect of random porous matrices on the ordering in nematic liquid crystals. The randomness destroys orientational lang-range order and drives the liquid crystal into a glass state. We predict two glass phases one of which…
Liquid crystal elastomers present a rich combination of effects associated with orientational symmetry breaking and the underlying rubber elasticity. In this work we focus on the effect of the network on the nematic--smectic-{\sl A}…
We explore possibility of tuning photonic crystal properties via order-disorder transition. We fabricated a photonic bandgap material consisting of a three-dimensional array of conducting magnetizable spheres. The spheres self-assemble into…
We show that applying simple dynamical rules to Baxter's eight-vertex model leads to a system which resembles a glass-forming liquid. There are analogies with liquid, supercooled liquid, glassy and crystalline states. The disordered phases…
The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The colloidal rods…
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…
We investigate the effects of random pinning, where we freeze the relaxation degrees of freedom for a fraction of randomly selected particles, on the yielding transition under oscillatory shear through extensive computer simulations. Using…
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…
Mixed-order phase transitions display a discontinuity in the order parameter like first-order transitions yet feature critical behavior like second-order transitions. Such transitions have been predicted for a broad range of equilibrium and…
We discuss a {\em family} of planar (two-dimensional) systems with the following phase strucure: a Fermi liquid, which goes by a second order transition (with non classical exponent even in mean-field) to an intermediate, inhomogeneous…
We numerically study a nondisordered lattice spin system with a first order liquid-crystal transition, as a model for supercooled liquids and glasses. Below the melting temperature the system can be kept in the metastable liquid phase, and…
We investigate in this paper the ground state and the nature of the transition from an orientational ordered phase at low temperature to the disordered state at high temperature in a molecular crystal. Our model is a Potts model which takes…
When liquids are classified using Tg -scaled Arrhenius plots of relaxation times (or relative rates of entropy increase above Tg) across a "strong-fragile" spectrum of behaviors, the "strong" liquids have always appeared rather…
We characterize the order-disorder transition in a model lipid bilayer using molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the ordered phase is hexatic. In particular, in-plane structures possess a finite concentration of 5-7 disclination…