Related papers: Polymer-disordered liquid crystals: Susceptibility…
A simple Kronig-Penney model is used to study the effect of nonlinear interactions on the electronic properties of ordered and disordered electrified chains. In the case of ordered potentials, we found that the nonlinearity suppresses the…
We explore the smectic liquid crystal order in a cell with a "dirty" substrate imposing random pinnings. Within harmonic elasticity we find a subtle three-dimensional surface disorder-driven transition into a pinned smectic-glass,…
The newly-discovered ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal exhibits a variety of unique defect phenomena. The depolarization field in the material favors spontaneous spatial variations in polarization, manifesting in diverse forms such as…
We propose that in a certain class of magnetic materials, known as non-Kramers 'spin ice,' disorder induces quantum entanglement. Instead of driving glassy behavior, disorder provokes quantum superpositions of spins throughout the system,…
We study non-uniform states and possible glassiness triggered by a competition between distinct local orders in disorder free systems. Both in Ginzburg-Landau theories and in simple field theories, such inhomogeneous states arise from…
Ground states of materials with orientational order ranging from solid ferromagnets and ferroelectrics to liquid crystals often contain spatially varying vector-like order parameter caused by inner factors such as the shape of building…
Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals are formed by achiral molecules with large dipole moments. Its three-dimensional orientational order is universally described as unidirectionally polar. We demonstrate that the ground state of…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
At low temperatures, some lattice spin models with simple ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic interactions (for example nearest-neighbour interaction being isotropic in spin space on a bipartite three-dimensional lattice) produce…
Molecular process of crystallization from an oriented amorphous state was reproduced by molecular dynamics simulation for a realistic polyethylene model. Initial oriented amorphous state was obtained by uniaxial drawing an isotropic glassy…
We consider atoms in two different periodic potentials induced by different lasers, one of which is coupled to a mechanical membrane via radiation pressure force. The atoms are intrinsically two-level systems that can absorb or emit…
Stability is an important and fruitful avenue of research for liquid crystal elastomers. At constant temperature, upon stretching, the homogeneous state of a nematic body becomes unstable, and alternating shear stripes develop at very low…
We consider a monomer-dimer system with a strong attractive dimer-dimer interaction that favors alignment. In 1979, Heilmann and Lieb conjectured that this model should exhibit a nematic liquid crystal phase, in which the dimers are mostly…
In this paper, we review the recent activity of our group on the study of disorder effects on systems displaying phase coherence. These studies have focused on both the electronic transport through mesoscopic metallic spin glasses, and cold…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
We expose the theoretical mechanisms underlying disorder-induced nematicity in systems exhibiting strong fluctuations or ordering in the nematic channel. Our analysis consists of a symmetry-based Ginzburg-Landau approach and associated…
We analyze the fluctuations in particle positions and inter-particle forces in disordered jammed crystals in the limit of weak disorder. We demonstrate that such athermal systems are fundamentally different from their thermal counterparts,…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While traditional entropic network models can be fit to the total stress, their underlying assumptions are inconsistent with simulation results.…
The ground state of chromonic liquid crystals, as revealed by a number of recent experiments, is quite different from that of ordinary nematic liquid crystals: it is twisted instead of uniform. The common explanation provided for this state…
The effect of ring stiffness and pressure on the glassy dynamics of a thermal assembly of two-dimensional ring polymers is investigated using extensive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. In all cases, dynamical slowing down is…