Related papers: Nanosecond electro-optic switching of a liquid cry…
We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on the Leslie-Ericksen theory of liquid crystal flow. Our goal is to investigate the nonlinear electrokinetic effects that occur because the nematic matrix is anisotropic, in…
Inverse melting refers to the rare thermodynamic phenomenon in which a solid melts into a liquid upon cooling, a transition that can occur only when the ordered (solid) phase has more entropy than the disordered (liquid) phase, and that has…
We demonstrate that one-dimensional photonic crystals with pure nematic liquid-crystal defects can operate as all-optical switching devices based on optical orientational nonlinearities of liquid crystals. We show that such a periodic…
The electro-optic Kerr effect in cholesteric blue phase liquid crystals is known to occur on sub-millisecond time scales, which is much faster than director reorientation in nematic liquid crystals. Using two-beam interference microscopy,…
A state of matter in which molecules show a long-range orientational order and no positional order is called a nematic liquid crystal. The best known and most widely used (for example, in modern displays) is the uniaxial nematic, with the…
Modeling liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) at the molecular level is crucial for the predictable design of energy-conversion and stimuli-responsive materials. Here, we develop a self-consistent field theory for LCEs which captures the…
The operation mechanism of nematic liquid crystals lies in the control of their optical properties by the orientation of underlying nematic directors. In analogy, electronic nematicity refers to a state whose electronic properties…
The dielectric dispersion in the uniaxial nematic liquid crystals affects the switching dynamics of the director, as the dielectric torque is determined by not only the present values of the electric field and director but also by their…
Suspended droplets of cholesteric (chiral nematic) liquid crystals spontaneously rotate in the presence of a heat flux due to a temperature gradient, a phenomenon known as Lehmann effect. So far, it is not clear whether this effect is due…
A nematic liquid crystal (NLC) layer with the anisotropy axis modulated at a fixed rate q in the transverse direction is considered. If the layer locally constitutes a half-wave plate, then the thin-screen approximation predicts 100%…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
Colloidal particles in liquid crystals tend to induce topological defects and distortions of the molecular alignment within the surrounding anisotropic host medium, which results in elasticity-mediated interactions not accessible to their…
Recent experiments have reported that ferroelectric nanoparticles have drastic effects on nematic liquid crystals--increasing the isotropic-nematic transition temperature by about 5 K, and greatly increasing the sensitivity to applied…
We show that the mechanical effect of light on the orientational ordering of the crystalline axis of a mesophase can be used to control the dynamics of the optical response of liquid crystal infiltrated photonic structures. The…
We study light transmission through a homeotropically oriented nematic liquid crystal cell and solve self-consistently a nonlinear equation for the nematic director coupled to Maxwell's equations. We demonstrate that above a certain…
Ferroelectric ordering in liquids is a fundamental question of physics. Here, we show that ferroelectric ordering of the molecules causes formation of recently reported splay nematic liquid-crystalline phase. As shown by dielectric…
The two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in moderate magnetic fields in ultra-clean AlAs-GaAs heterojunctions exhibits transport anomalies suggestive of a compressible, anisotropic metallic state. Using scaling arguments and Monte Carlo…
This study explores how molecular shape changes influence the phase behavior of liquid crystals, particularly the nematic (N) phase of 5CB, through all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The results demonstrate that molecular shape…
An electron nematic is a translationally invariant state which spontaneously breaks the discrete rotational symmetry of a host crystal. In a clean square lattice, the electron nematic has two preferred orientations, while dopant disorder…
Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…