Related papers: Nematics, Knots and Non-orientable Surfaces
Topological defects are a ubiquitous phenomenon in diverse physical systems. In nematic liquid crystals (LCs), they are dynamic, physicochemically distinct, sensitive to stimuli, and are thereby promising for a range of applications.…
Topological defects (TDs) are crucial for understanding important physical properties of crystalline materials including mechanical failure, ion transport, and two-dimensional melting. This concept has not translated to disordered materials…
Nematic colloids exhibit a large diversity of topological defects and structures induced by colloidal particles in the orientationally ordered liquid crystal host fluids. These defects and field configurations define elastic interactions…
Active colloids and liquid crystals are capable of locally converting the macroscopically-supplied energy into directional motion and promise a host of new applications, ranging from drug delivery to cargo transport at the mesoscale. Here…
Optical vortices as topological objects exist ubiquitously in nature. In this paper, by making use of the $\phi$-mapping topological current theory, we investigate the topology in the closed and knotted optical vortices. The topological…
Recently there had been a great deal of activity associated with various schemes of designing both analytical and experimental methods describing knotted structures in electrodynamics and in hydrodynamics.The majority of works in…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…
Morphogenesis of living systems involves topological shape transformations which are highly unusual in the inanimate world. Here we demonstrate that a droplet of a nematic liquid crystal changes its equilibrium shape from a simply-connected…
We propose the use of topographic modulation of surfaces to select and localize particles in nematic colloids. By considering convex and concave deformations of one of the confining surfaces we show that the colloid-flat surface repulsion…
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…
Topological defects that form on surfaces of ordered media, dubbed boojums, are ubiquitous in superfluids, liquid crystals (LCs), Langmuir monolayers, and Bose-Einstein condensates. They determine supercurrents in superfluids, impinge on…
Many systems in nature and the synthetic world involve ordered arrangements of units on two-dimensional surfaces. We review here the fundamental role payed by both the topology of the underlying surface and its detailed curvature. Topology…
In this article, we propose a new approach for describing and understanding knots and links in a 3-manifold through the use of an embedded non-orientable surface. Specifically, we define a plat-like representation based on this…
Ordered phases on curved substrates experience a complex interplay of ordering and intrinsic curvature, commonly producing frustration and singularities. This is an especially important issue in crystals as ever-smaller scale materials are…
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…
A time crystal is a time dependent physical system that does not reach a standstill, even in state of minimum energy. Here we show that the stability of a time crystal can be enhanced by its topology. For this we simulate time crystals made…
Knot theory provides a powerful tool for the understanding of topological matters in biology, chemistry, and physics. Here knot theory is introduced to describe topological phases in the quantum spin system. Exactly solvable models with…
Toroidal nematics are nematic liquid crystals confined within a circular torus and subject to planar degenerate anchoring on the boundary of the torus. They may be droplets floating in an isotropic environment or cavities carved out of a…
Vortex stretching is a common feature of many complex flows, including turbulence. Experiments and simulations of isolated vortex knots demonstrate that this behavior can also be seen in relatively simple systems, and appears to be…