Related papers: Nematics, Knots and Non-orientable Surfaces
Toroidal nematics are droplets of nematic liquid crystals in the form of a circular torus. When the nematic director is subject to planar degenerate boundary conditions, the bend-only director field with vector lines along the parallels of…
We introduce a relation of cobordism for knots in thickened surfaces and study cobordism invariants of such knots.
Topology is an important determinant of the behavior of a great number of condensed-matter systems, but until recently has played a minor role in elasticity. We develop a theory for the deformations of a class of twisted non-Euclidean…
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…
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…
Directional media, such as nematic liquid crystals and ferromagnets, are characterized by their topologically stabilized defects in directional order. In nematics, boundary conditions and surface-treated inclusions often create complex…
We show by means of continuum theory and simulations that geometric percolation in uniaxial nematics of hard slender particles is fundamentally different from that in isotropic dispersions. In the nematic, percolation depends only very…
The optical properties of liquid crystals serve as the basis for display, diagnostic, and sensing technologies. Such properties are generally controlled by relying on electric fields. In this work, we investigate the effects of microfluidic…
Malleability of metals is an example of how dynamics of defects like dislocations induced by external stresses alters material properties and enables technological applications. However, these defects move merely to comply with the…
Streamlines, vortex lines and magnetic flux tubes in turbulent fluids and plasmas display a great amount of coiling, twisting and linking, raising the question as to whether their topological complexity (continually created and destroyed by…
Optical vortices are the electromagnetic analogue of fluid vortices studied in hydrodynamics. In both cases the traveling wavefront, either made of light or fluid, is twisted like a corkscrew around its propagation axis - an analogy that…
We show that the torus knot topology is inherent in electromagnetic and gravitational radiation by constructing spin-$N$ fields based on this topology from the elementary states of twistor theory. The twistor functions corresponding to the…
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…
Given recipe of qualitative, kinetic modelling by geometric methods of three-dimensional dendritic crystals. Characteristic features of the perturbations appearing on the surface of a spherical body, leading to different scenarios of the…
Rational control over the periodic arrangement of particles by means of external stimuli is a technologically important aspect of colloidal science with important physical underpinnings. Here, a robust structural control of particle…
Vortex coherent structures on arrays of nonlinear oscillators joined by weak links into topologically nontrivial two-dimensional discrete manifolds have been theoretically studied. A circuit of nonlinear electric oscillators coupled by…
Non-equilibrium dynamics of topological defects can be used as a fundamental propulsion mechanism in microscopic active matter. Here, we demonstrate swimming of topological defect-propelled colloidal particles in (passive) nematic fluids…
Optical vortex knots have been realized in monochromatic laser beams, but monochromatic fields are stationary and their topology is frozen. Here we show that knotted spatiotemporal vortices, whose phase singularities form closed loops in…
The existence of ring-like and knotted solitons in O(3) non-linear sigma model is analysed. The role of isotopy of knots/links in classifying such solitons is pointed out. Appearance of torus knot solitons is seen.
The conventional topological description given by the fundamental group of nematic order parameter does not adequately explain the entangled defect line structures that have been observed in nematic colloids. We introduce a new topological…