Related papers: Pseudo-Casimir interactions across nematic films w…
Mesoscopic particles immersed in a critical fluid experience long-range Casimir forces due to critical fluctuations. Using field theoretical methods, we investigate the Casimir interaction between two spherical particles and between a…
We study the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional concentrated suspensions of colloidal particles in active gels by computer simulations. Remarkably, we find that activity induces a dynamic clustering of colloids even in the absence of any…
The interplay of interactions and disorder in two-dimensional (2D) electron systems has actively been studied for decades. The paradigmatic approach involves starting with a clean Fermi liquid and perturbing the system with both disorder…
We consider a model for a polymer interacting with an attractive wall through a random sequence of charges. We focus on the so-called diluted limit, when the charges are very rare but have strong intensity. In this regime, we determine the…
We analyze the behavior of a suspension of active polar particles under shear. In the absence of external forces, orientationally ordered active particles are known to exhibit a transition to a state of non-uniform polarization and…
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,…
Equilibrium director structures in two thin hybrid planar films of biaxial nematics are investigated through Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations based on a lattice Hamiltonian model within the London dispersion approximation. While the…
We investigate a disordered multi-dimensional linear system in which the interaction parameters vary stochastically in time with defined temporal correlations. We refer to this type of disorder as "annealed", in contrast to quenched…
We study, using Monte Carlo simulations, the steady state properties of a system of particles interacting via hard core exclusion and moving in a discrete flashing disordered ratchet potential. Quenched disorder is introduced by breaking…
By Monte Carlo simulations of a soft ellipsoid model for liquid crystals, we study whether a layer of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules can induce tilt in a nematic fluid. The chains are fairly short (four monomers) and made of the…
We investigate theoretically the morphology of a thin nematic film adsorbed at flat substrate patterned by stripes with alternating aligning properties, normal and tangential respectively. We construct a simple "exactly-solvable" effective…
We provide a minimal model for an active nematic film in contact with both a solid substrate and a passive isotropic fluid, and explore its dynamics in one and two dimensions using a combination of hybrid Lattice Boltzmann simulations and…
The effective interaction between spherical colloids in nematic liquid crystals is investigated in the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory. The colloids differ through their interaction with the nematic. While both particles induce…
We investigate the equilibrium properties of a colloidal solution in contact with a soft interface. As a result of symmetry breaking, surface effects are generally prevailing in confined colloidal systems. In this Letter, particular…
We investigate the universal orientation-dependent interactions between non-spherical colloidal particles immersed in a critical solvent by studying the instructive paradigm of a needle embedded in bounded two-dimensional Ising models at…
Depinning and nonequilibrium transitions within sliding states in systems driven over quenched disorder arise across a wide spectrum of size scales ranging from atomic friction at the nanoscale, flux motion in type-II superconductors at the…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal confined by two parallel flat substrates whose anchoring conditions vary periodically in one lateral direction. Within the Gaussian approximation, we study the effective forces between the patterned…
Using laser tweezers and fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we study colloidal interactions of solid microspheres in the nematic bulk caused by elastic distortions around the particles with strong tangential surface anchoring. The…
We consider a confined sheared active polar liquid crystal with a uniform orientation and study the effect of variations in the magnitude of polarization. Restricting our analysis to one-dimensional geometries, we demonstrate that with…
We investigate, by means of the scattering approach, the Casimir-Polder interaction between a neutral anisotropic polarizable particle and a corrugated surface made of a realistic material. By focusing on the lateral force (arising from the…