Related papers: Pathways to faceting of vesicles
When thermal energies are weak, two dimensional lamellar structures confined on a curved substrate display complex patterns arising from the competition between layer bending and compression in the presence of geometric constraints. We…
The morphologies of genus-2 to -8 fluid vesicles are studied by using dynamically triangulated membrane simulations with area-difference elasticity. It is revealed that the alignments of the membrane pores alter the vesicle shapes and the…
Biological cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with local orientational order and topological defects. Here we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayer with the predesigned orientational patterns using human dermal…
Geometrical frustration in thin sheets is ubiquitous across scales in biology and becomes increasingly relevant in technology. Previous research identified the origin of the frustration as the violation of Gauss's \emph{Theorema Egregium}.…
Topological frustration (or topological mechanics) is the existence of classical zero modes that are robust to many but not all distortions of the Hamiltonian. It arises naturally from locality in systems whose interactions form a set of…
We use a series of molecular dynamics simulations, and analytical theory, to demonstrate that a system of hard spheres confined to a narrow cylindrical channel exhibits a continuous phase transition from an isotropic fluid at low densities,…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
Mixing theoretical topological structures with cutting-edge simulation methods, a recent study in Nature Communications has finally confirmed the existence of topological defects in glasses and their crucial role for plasticity.
We study the effect of geometric frustration on dilational mechanical metamaterial membranes. While shape frustrated elastic plates can only accommodate non-zero Gaussian curvature up to size scales that ultimately vanish with their elastic…
This review reports some theoretical results on the Geometry of membranes. The governing equations to describe equilibrium configurations of lipid vesicles, lipid membranes with free edges, and chiral lipid membranes are derived from the…
Topological defects are ubiquitous in physics. Whenever a symmetry breaking phase transition occurs, topological defects may form. The best known examples are vortex lines in type II super conductors or in liquid Helium, and declination…
Topological frustration arises when boundary conditions impose geometric frustration in a quantum system, creating delocalized defects in the ground states and profoundly altering the low-energy properties. While previous studies have been…
Biological surfaces, such as developing epithelial tissues, exhibit in-plane polar or nematic order and can be strongly curved. Recently, integer (+1) topological defects have been identified as morphogenetic hotspots in living systems.…
Despite its importance in atmospheric science, much remains unknown about the microscopic mechanism of heterogeneous ice nucleation. In this work, we perform hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of the heterogeneous nucleation of ice on a range…
Polymer vesicles are stable robust vesicles made from block copolymer amphiphiles. Recent progress in the chemical design of block copolymers opens up the exciting possibility of creating a wide variety of polymer vesicles with varying fine…
After a brief introduction to several variational problems in the study of shapes of thin thickness structures, we deal with variational problems on 2-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional Euclidian space by using exterior differential…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
In pulsating active matter, topological defects are motile despite the absence of any macroscopic flows and microscopic self-propulsion. We reveal that this motility arises from a ratchet effect: the mechanochemical coupling between local…
The ability to design and fabricate materials with tailored mechanical properties, combined with immunity to damage, is a frontier of materials engineering. For example, materials which are characterized by elastic properties that depend on…
Toroidal templates such as vesicles with hexatic bond orientational order are discussed. The total energy including disclination charges is explicitly computed for hexatic order embedded in a toroidal geometry. Related results apply for…