Related papers: Threading the Needle: Generating Textures in Nemat…
We propose a general formalism to characterize orientational frustration of smectic liquid crystals in confinement by interpreting the emerging networks of grain boundaries as objects with a topological charge. In a formal idealization,…
Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…
Various concepts and constructions in homotopy theory have been defined in the digital setting. Although there have been several attempts at a definition of a fibration in the digital setting, robust examples of these digital fibrations are…
We construct characteristic classes of smooth (Hamiltonian) fibrations as as fiber integrals of products of Pontriagin (or Chern) classes of vertical vector bundles over the total space of the universal fibration. We give explicit formulae…
Field theories predict that phase transitions sequentially breaking continuous and discrete symmetries can generate hybrid topological structures in which defects of different dimensionalities merge. We report experimental and numerical…
Knots and links are fascinating and intricate topological objects. Their influence spans from DNA and molecular chemistry to vortices in superfluid helium, defects in liquid crystals and cosmic strings in the early universe. Here, we find…
We give the global homotopy classification of nematic textures for a general domain with weak anchoring boundary conditions and arbitrary defect set in terms of twisted cohomology, and give an explicit computation for the case of knotted…
Knots are familiar entities that appear at a captivating nexus of art, technology, mathematics, and science. As topologically stable objects within field theories, they have been speculatively proposed as explanations for diverse persistent…
A central theme in many body physics is emergence - new properties arise when several particles are brought together. Particularly fascinating is the idea that the quantum statistics may be an emergent property. This was first noted in the…
Creation and control of topological complex excitations play crucial roles in both fundamental physics and modern information science. Torons are a sophisticated class of 3D chiral polar topological structures with both skyrmionic…
The Hopf index, a topological invariant that quantifies the linking of preimage fibers, is fundamental to the structure and stability of hopfions. In this work, we propose a new mathematical framework for modeling hopfions with high Hopf…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
Widely known for their uses in displays and electro-optics, liquid crystals are more than just technological marvels. They vividly reveal the topology and structure of various solitonic and singular field configurations, often markedly…
Topological magnetic structures, such as Hopfions, are central to three-dimensional magnetism, but their characterization in complex geometries remains challenging. We introduce a robust finite-element method for calculating the Hopf index…
Topological solitons are relevant in several areas of physics [1]. Recently, these configurations have been investigated in contexts as diverse as hydrodynamics [2], Bose-Einstein condensates [3], ferromagnetism [4], knotted light [5] and…
Non-Hermitian systems have been discussed mostly in the context of open systems and nonequilibrium. Recent experimental progress is much from optical, cold-atomic, and classical platforms due to the vast tunability and clear identification…
It is known that the topological Hopf term in two-dimensional (2D) spin systems can be derived by coupling to massless Dirac fermions. We establish a universal rule governing the generation of Hopf terms in 2D quantum spin systems coupled…
The homotopy theory of topological defects is a powerful tool for organizing and unifying many ideas across a broad range of physical systems. Recently, experimental progress has been made in controlling and measuring colloidal inclusions…
We construct a family of Hermitian metrics on the Hopf surface $ \mathbb{S}^3\times \mathbb{S}^1$, whose fundamental classes represent distinct cohomology classes in the Aeppli cohomology group. These metrics are locally conformally…
Topological defects are distinctive signatures of liquid crystals. They profoundly affect the viscoelastic behavior of the fluid by constraining the orientational structure in a way that inevitably requires global changes not achievable…