Related papers: Thermoconvective structure dynamics in horizontal …
Spontaneous onset of a low temperature topologically ordered phase in a 2-dimensional (2D) lattice model of uniaxial liquid crystal (LC) was debated extensively pointing to a suspected underlying mechanism affecting the RG flow near the…
We study the evolution of a melting front between the solid and liquid phases of a pure incompressible material where fluid motions are driven by unstable temperature gradients. In a plane layer geometry, this can be seen as classical…
Deviations of molecular shapes from spherical symmetry may give rise to a variety of novel phenomena, including their dynamic behavior. It has recently been predicted [Mazza \textit{et al}. Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{105}, 227802 (2010)] that…
We report experiments on thermally driven convection in an inclined layer of large aspect ratio in a fluid of Prandtl number $\sigma \approx 1$. We observed a number of new nonlinear, mostly spatio-temporally chaotic, states. At small…
The ground state of twist-bend nematic liquid crystals is a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the nematic director precesses uniformly about an axis, making a fixed angle with it. Both precession senses are allowed in the ground…
We use numerical simulations to investigate the hydrodynamic behavior of the interface between nematic (N) and isotropic (I) phases of a confined active liquid crystal. At low activities, a stable interface with constant shape and velocity…
We use lattice Boltzmann simulations of the Beris--Edwards formulation of nematodynamics to probe the response of a nematic liquid crystal with conflicting anchoring at the boundaries under shear and Poiseuille flow. The geometry we focus…
We investigate the dynamics of a fluid layer subject to an imposed bottom heat flux and a top monotonically-increasing temperature profile driving horizontal convection. We use direct numerical simulations and consider a large range of…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…
Cholesteric Liquid Crystals (CLCs), subject to externally applied magnetic fields and confined between two parallel planar surfaces with strong homeotropic anchoring conditions, are found to undergo transitions to different types of…
A series of numerical simulations of Rayleigh-B{\'e}nard convection in a cubic cavity are conducted in order to examine the structure of the thermal boundary layer in case of mixed boundary conditions. The main goal of the study is the…
The thermomagnetic convection of magnetic fluids in a cylindrical geometry subjected to a homogeneous magnetic field is studied. The study is motivated by a novel thermal instability [W. Luo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4134 (1999)]. As…
The optical birefringence of rod-like nematogens (7CB, 8CB), imbibed in parallel silica channels with 10 nm diameter and 300 micrometer length, is measured and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational order of the…
Motivated by recent experiments, the isotropic-nematic phase transition in chromonic liquid crystals is studied. As temperature decreases, nematic nuclei nucleate, grow, and coalesce, giving rise to tactoid microstructures in an isotropic…
We present magneto-optic measurements on two materials that form the recently discovered twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase. This intriguing state of matter represents a new fluid phase that is orientationally anisotropic in three directions…
Optical birefringence measurements on a rod-like liquid crystal (8OCB), imbibed in silica channels (7 nm diameter), are presented and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational and positional order of the confined liquid…
We report a liquid-crystal pattern-formation experiment in which we break the lateral (translational) symmetry of a nematic medium with a laser-induced thermal gradient. The work is motivated by an improved measurement (reported here) of…
We present results of a simulation study of inelastic hard-disks vibrated in a vertical container. An Event-Driven Molecular Dynamics method is developed for studying the onset of convection. Varying the relevant parameters (inelasticity,…
Sessile droplets of a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline material were exposed to surface electric fields produced by pyroelectric and photogalvanic (photovoltaic) effects in X-cut iron-doped lithium niobate crystals. The resulting…
We report experimental and theoretical results on the flexoelectric instability and crossover between flexoelectric domains and electroconvection in a hybrid aligned nematic MBBA under d.c. voltage. At threshold a spatially periodic…