Related papers: Elastic director vibrations in nematic liquid crys…
Despite the fact that quantitative experimental data have been available for more than forty years now, nematoacoustics still poses intriguing theoretical and experimental problems. In this paper, we prove that the main observed features of…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit both crystal-like and fluid-like features. In particular, the propagation of an acoustic wave shows an unexpected occurrence of some of the solid-like features at the hydrodynamic level, namely, the…
A nonlinear viscoelastic theory of nematodynamic type is developed for nematic liquid crystalline (LC) semi-flexible polymers. A measure of transient elastic strain due to the change in length of macromolecular strands under stress, and the…
Dynamics of small particles, both living such as swimming bacteria and inanimate, such as colloidal spheres, has fascinated scientists for centuries. If one could learn how to control and streamline their chaotic motion, that would open…
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft and semi-soft nematic elastomers using two different but related dynamic theories. Our first formulation describes the pure hydrodynamic behavior of nematic elastomers in which…
We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on a variational formulation of nematodynamics. Extending our previous work, we consider a general setup which incorporates dielectric anisotropy of the liquid-crystalline matrix…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
As recently reported [Turiv T. et al., Science, 2013, Vol. 342, 1351], fluctuations in the orientation of the liquid crystal (LC) director can transfer momentum from the LC to a colloid, such that the diffusion of the colloid becomes…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
The director configuration of disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external magnetic field is evaluated. Our method is a combination of a polynomial expansion for the director and of further analytical…
A theoretical study is presented of surface waves at a monomolecular surfactant film between an isotropic liquid and a nematic liquid crystal for the case when the surfactant film is in the isotropic two-dimensional fluid phase and induces…
Wrinkles commonly develop in a thin film deposited on a soft elastomer substrate when the film is subject to compression. Motivated by recent experiments [Agrawal et al., Soft Matter 8, 7138 (2012)] that show how wrinkle morphology can be…
Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
In liquid crystal elastomers, the orientational order of liquid crystals is coupled with elastic distortions of crosslinked polymer networks. Previous theoretical research has described these materials through two different approaches: a…
Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…
Study of electrokinetics of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) with dissolved impurities hold utmost importance in understanding director distribution characteristics and modified flow rheology. However, no concrete theory for the non-uniform…
In nematic liquid crystals light is strongly scattered from director fluctuations. We are interested in the limit where the incoming light wave is scattered many times. Then, the light transport can be described by a diffusion equation for…
Colloidal rods immersed in a thermotropic liquid-crystalline solvent are at the basis of so-called hybrid liquid crystals which are characterized by tunable nematic fluidity with symmetries ranging from conventional uniaxial nematic or…
Free interfaces of liquid crystals tend to minimise both capillarity and anchoring forces. Here we study nematic films in planar and radial geometries with antagonistic anchoring boundary conditions and one deformable interface. Assuming a…
The anisotropic, stress-dependent velocity of elastic waves in glass beads -- as observed by Y. Khidas and X. Jia, see [Phys. Rev. E, 81:021303, Feb. 2010] -- is shown to be well accounted for by ``granular solid hydrodynamics,'' a…