Related papers: Threading the Needle: Generating Textures in Nemat…

There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…

We introduce in this paper a field theory on symplectic manifolds that are fibered over a real surface with interior marked points and cylindrical ends. We assign to each such object a morphism between certain tensor products of quantum and…

To gain deeper insight into the complex, stable, and robust configurations of magnetic textures, topological characterisation has proven essential. In particular, while the skyrmion number is a well-established topological invariant for 2D…

There are two prominent applications of the mathematical concept of topology to the physics of materials: band topology, which classifies different topological insulators and semimetals, and topological defects that represent immutable…

Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…

The brain achieves stability and plasticity in a topologically complex, shifting world through Metric-Topology Factorization (MTF), separating discrete topological indexing for context selection from continuous metric condensation for local…

We characterize the different morphologies adopted by a drop of liquid placed on two randomly oriented fibers, which is a first step toward understanding the wetting of fibrous networks. The present work reviews previous modeling for…

Using tools and concepts from contact topology we show that non-vanishing twist implies conservation of the layer structure in cholesteric liquid crystals. This leads to a number of additional topological invariants for cholesteric…

We study the topology associated with physical vector and scalar fields. A mathematical object, e.g., a ball, can be continuously deformed, without tearing or gluing, to make other topologically equivalent objects, e.g., a cube or a solid…

Topology optimization is able to maximally leverage the high DOFs and mechanical potentiality of porous foams but faces three fundamental challenges: conforming to free-form outer shapes, maintaining geometric connectivity between adjacent…

In this letter we show numerical existence of O(4) Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) Textures living in (N +1) dimensional spacetime. These defects are characterized by $S^N\rightarrow S^3$ mapping, generalizing the well-known Hopf fibration into…

Topology can manifest itself in colloids when quantified by invariants like Euler characteristics of nonzero-genus colloidal surfaces, albeit spherical colloidal particles are most often studied, and colloidal particles with complex…

The ability to control matter at the atomic scale has revolutionized our understanding of the physical world, opening doors to unprecedented technological advancements. Quantum technology, which harnesses the unique principles of quantum…

Optical spin textures with nontrivial topology hold promise for structured light and photonic information processing, yet their generation typically relies heavily on externally structured light with care. This raises questions about their…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…

Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…

We study piecewise linear knot diagrams in the base of almost toric fibrations of symplectic four-manifolds. These diagrams translate to deformations of the almost toric fibration. We give several applications to symplectic topology, among…

In experiments which take a liquid crystal rapidly from the isotropic to the nematic phase, a dense tangle of defects is formed. In nematics, there are in principle both line and point defects (``hedgehogs''), but no point defects are…

Topological spin configurations, such as soliton-like spin texture and Dirac electron assemblies, have emerged in recent years in both fundamental science and technological applications. Achieving stable topological spin textures at…

The topological understanding of nematic liquid crystals is traditionally centered on singularities, or defects, and their classification via homotopy theory. However, this approach has ultimately proved insufficient to properly capture a…