Related papers: Controlled topological transitions in thin film ph…
As phenomena that necessarily emerge from the collective behavior of interacting particles, phase transitions continue to be difficult to predict using statistical thermodynamics. A recent proposal called the topological hypothesis suggests…
Segregation and mixing of granular mixtures during heap formation have important consequences in industry and agriculture. This research investigates three different final particle configurations of bi-disperse granular mixtures --…
We study time-reversal-invariant topological superconductivity in topological insulator (TI) thin films including both intra- and inter-surface pairing. We find a nontrivial topology for multiple different configurations. For intra-surface…
Motivated by recent experimental work on multicomponent lipid membranes supported by colloidal scaffolds, we report an exhaustive theoretical investigation of the equilibrium configurations of binary mixtures on curved substrates. Starting…
When systems that can undergo phase separation between two coexisting phases in the bulk are confined in thin film geometry between parallel walls, the phase behavior can be profoundly modified. These phenomena shall be described and…
The evolution of interfaces is intrinsic to many physical processes ranging from cavitation in fluids to recrystallization in solids. Computational modeling of interface motion entails a number of challenges, many of which are related to…
We study binary mixtures of small active and big passive athermal particles interacting via soft repulsive forces on a frictional substrate. Athermal self propelled particles are known to phase separate into a dense aggregate and a dilute…
Three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TIs) are known to carry 2D Dirac-like topological surface states in which spin-momentum locking prohibits backscattering. When thinned down to a few nanometers, the hybridization between the…
The dynamics of thin liquid films flowing over a spinning disc is studied through a combination of experiments and direct numerical simulations. We consider a comprehensive range of interfacial flow regimes from waveless through to…
Two-dimensional topological insulators possess conducting edge states at their boundary while being insulating in the bulk. The detection of edge states remains an open question in ultracold atom setups. We propose a configuration to…
The topology of a topological material can be encoded in its surface states. These surface states can only be removed by a bulk topological quantum phase transition into a trivial phase. Here we use photoemission spectroscopy to image the…
We study the mixing in the presence of convective flow in a porous medium. Convection is characterized by the formation of vortices and stagnation points, where the fluid interface is stretched and compressed enhancing mixing. We analyze…
We consider the demixing of a binary fluid mixture, under gravity, which is steadily driven into a two phase region by slowly ramping the temperature. We assume, as a first approximation, that the system remains spatially isothermal, and…
Within self-consistent field theory we study the phase behaviour of a symmetric binary AB polymer blend confined into a thin film. The film surfaces interact with the monomers via short range potentials. One surface attracts the A component…
Many objects in nature and industry are wrapped in a thin sheet to enhance their chemical, mechanical, or optical properties. There are similarly a variety of methods for wrapping, from pressing a film onto a hard substrate, to using…
A pair of Dirac points (analogous to a vortex-antivortex pair) associated with opposite topological numbers (with $\pm\pi$ Berry phases) can be merged together through parameter tuning and annihilated to gap the Dirac spectrum, offering a…
The nanostructural evolution of the strain-induced structural phase transition in BiFeO3 is examined. Using high-resolution X-ray diffraction and scanning-probe microscopy-based studies we have uniquely identified and examined the numerous…
Topological phases have attracted much interest in recent years. While there are a number of three-dimensional materials exhibiting topological properties, there are relatively few two-dimensional examples aside from the well-known quantum…
Hydrocarbon films confined between smooth mica surfaces have long provided an experimental playground for model studies of structure and dynamics of confined liquids. However fundamental questions regarding the phase behavior and shear…
The miscibility of two interacting quantum systems is an important testing ground for the understanding of complex quantum systems. Two-component Bose-Einstein condensates enable the investigation of this scenario in a particularly well…