Related papers: Tricritical behavior of soft nematic elastomers
Elastic effects in a model of disordered nematic elastomers are numerically investigated in two dimensions. Networks crosslinked in the isotropic phase exhibit unusual soft mechanical response against stretching. It arises from gradual…
Relaxor ferroelectrics exhibit exceptional dielectric and electromechanical properties, yet their microscopic origins remain elusive due to the interplay of hierarchical polar structures and chemical complexity. While models based on polar…
We study the formation of an electronic nematic phase characterized by a broken point-group symmetry in interacting fermion systems within the weak coupling theory. As a function of interaction strength and chemical potential, the phase…
We investigate the role of large amplitude sub-critical thermal fluctuations in the dynamics of first order phase transitions. In particular, we obtain a kinetic equation for the number density of sub-critical fluctuations of the…
The dielectric spectra of the twist bend nematic phase of the bent shaped achiral liquid crystal dimer are studied for the determination of the different relaxation modes. The two molecular processes were assigned one to the precessional…
Due to the intertwining between electronic nematic and elastic degrees of freedom, lattice defects and structural inhomogeneities commonly found in crystals can have a significant impact on the electronic properties of nematic materials.…
A micrometer-scale elastic shell immersed in a nematic liquid crystal may be deformed by the host if the cost of deformation is comparable to the cost of elastic deformation of the nematic. Moreover, such inclusions interact and form chains…
We model polydomain liquid-crystal elastomers by extending the neo-classical soft and semi-soft free energies used successfully to describe monodomain samples. We show that there is a significant difference between polydomains cross-linked…
Phase separation in a complex fluid with lamellar order has been studied in the case of cold thermal fronts propagating diffusively from external walls. The velocity hydrodynamic modes are taken into account by coupling the…
A systematic analysis of low temperature magnetic phase diagrams of Ce compounds is performed in order to recognize the thermodynamic conditions to be fulfilled by those systems to reach a quantum critical regime and, alternatively, to…
In this contribution we review a series of simple one dimensional lattice models that with an appropriate choice of parameters can account for various anomalous features of the behaviour of complex systems such as water. In particular, we…
A Self Consistent Field Theory description of equilibrium, but non uniform, configurations adopted by semi flexible liquid crystal molecules is presented. Two cases are considered, isotropic-nematic phase boundaries, and topological defects…
The behaviour of uniform elastically isotropic compressible systems in critical and tricritical points is described in field-theoretical terms. Renormalizationgroup equations are analyzed for the case of three-dimensional systems in a…
Electro-hydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
We study the role of the control parameter triggering nematic order (temperature or concentration) on the dynamical behavior of a system of nanorods under shear. Our study is based on a set of mesoscopic equations of motion for the…
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…
In a cluster crystal, each lattice site is occupied by multiple soft-core particles. As the number density is increased at zero temperature, a `cascade' of isostructural phase transitions can occur between states whose site occupancy…
We investigate the nonlinear vibrations of a functionally graded dielectric elastomer plate subjected to electromechanical loads. We focus on local and global dynamics in the system. We employ the Gent strain energy function to model the…
In an attempt to quantitatively characterize the recently observed slow dynamics in the isotropic and nematic phase of liquid crystals, we investigate the single-particle orientational dynamics of rodlike molecules across the…