Related papers: Topological characterization of crystalline ice st…
Bulk properties of ionic liquid crystals are investigated using density functional theory. The liquid crystal molecules are represented by ellipsoidal particles with charges located in their center or at their tails. Attractive interactions…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
Ice desorption affects the evolution of the gas-phase chemistry during the protostellar stage, and also determines the chemical composition of comets forming in circumstellar disks. From observations, most volatile species are found in…
Ice nucleation and growth are critical in many fields, including atmospheric science, cryobiology, and aviation. However, understanding the detailed mechanisms of ice crystal growth remains challenging. In this work, crystallization at the…
When flat or on a firm mechanical substrate, the atomic composition and atomistic structure of two-dimensional crystals dictate their chemical, electronic, optical, and mechanical properties. These properties change when the two-dimensional…
The hydrogen-bond network of water is characterized by the presence of coordination defects relative to the ideal tetrahedral network of ice, whose fluctuations determine the static and time-dependent properties of the liquid. Because of…
Physical systems are frequently modeled as sets of points in space, each representing the position of an atom, molecule, or mesoscale particle. As many properties of such systems depend on the underlying ordering of their constituent…
Atom arrangement plays a critical role in determining material properties. It is, therefore, essential for materials science and engineering to identify and characterize distinct atom configurations. Currently, crystal structures can be…
Ongoing surveys are in the process of measuring the chemical abundances in large numbers of stars, with the ultimate goal of reconstructing the formation history of the Milky Way using abundances as tracers. However, interpretation of these…
Hexagonal ice ($\rm{I_h}$), the most common structure of ice, displays a variety of fascinating properties. Despite major efforts, a theoretical description of all its properties is still lacking. In particular, correctly accounting for its…
Artificial Spin Ices are two dimensional arrays of magnetic, interacting nano-structures whose geometry can be chosen at will, and whose elementary degrees of freedom can be characterized directly. They were introduced at first to study…
Ice is a major component of astrophysical environment - from interstellar molecular clouds through protoplanetary disks to evolved solar systems. Ice and complex organic matter coexist in these environments as well, and it is thought…
We study the phase behavior of a system of charged colloidal particles that are electrostatically bound to an almost flat interface between two fluids. We show that, despite the fact that our experimental system consists of only $10^{3}$ -…
Polymorphism, the ability of a compound to crystallize in multiple distinct structures, plays a vital role in determining the physical, chemical, and functional properties of materials. Accurate identification and prediction of polymorphic…
We study the topological dynamics by iterations of a piecewise continuous, non linear and locally contractive map in a real finite dimensional compact ball. We consider those maps satisfying the "separation property": different continuity…
Crystalline symmetry can be used to predict bulk and surface properties of topological phases. For non-interacting cases, symmetry-eigenvalue analysis of Bloch states at high symmetry points in the Brillouin zone simplifies the calculation…
Water freezing is ubiquitous on Earth, affecting many areas from biology to climate science and aviation technology. Probing the atomic structure in the homogeneous ice nucleation process from scratch is of great value but still…
We develop intuitive metrics for quantifying complex nucleating systems under confinement. These are shown to arise naturally from the analysis of the topological ring network, and are amenable for use as order parameters for such systems.…
Snow crystals growing from water vapor occasionally exhibit morphologies with three-fold (trigonal) symmetry, even though the ice crystal lattice has a molecular structure with six-fold symmetry. In extreme cases, thin platelike snow…
Two-dimensional polar liquid crystals have been discovered recently in monolayers of anisotropic molecules. Here, we provide a systematic theoretical description of liquid-crystalline phases for polar particles in two spatial dimensions.…