Related papers: Knotted Defects in Nematic Liquid Crystals
We consider the problem of an inextensible but flexible fiber advected by a steady chaotic flow, and ask the simple question whether the fiber can spontaneously knot itself. Using a 1D Cosserat model, a simple local viscous drag model and…
The defining property of electronic nematicity -- the spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry -- implies an unavoidable coupling between the nematic order parameter and elastic strain fields, known as nemato-elasticity. While both…
Optical knots and links, consisting of trajectories of phase or polarisation singularities, are intriguing nontrivial three-dimensional topologies. They are theoretically predicted and experimentally observed in paraxial and non-paraxial…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
We explore the structure of nuclei and topological defects in the first-order phase transition between the nematic (N) and isotropic (I) phases in lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs). The LCLCs are formed by self-assembled molecular…
We study possible topological features of Kondo spin liquid phase in terms of the one- and two-dimensional Kondo necklace models within the frame work of quantum O(N) non-liner sigma model (NLSM). In the one-dimensional case, it is found…
We perform dynamical simulations of a two-dimensional active nematic fluid in coexistence with an isotropic fluid. Drops of active nematic become elongated, and an effective anchoring develops at the nematic-isotropic interface. The…
Cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit great morphological richness of static metastable states. Understanding the transitions between such states is key for the development of switchable devices. We show, using a quasi-one-dimensional model,…
We study transformations of self-organized defect arrays at the nematic-smectic A liquid crystal phase transition, and show that these defect configurations are correlated, or "remembered", across the phase transition. A thin film of…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…
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.…
We propose and study a local map capable of describing the full variety of dynamical states, ranging from regular to chaotic, obtained when a nematic liquid crystal is subjected to a steady shear flow. The map is formulated in terms of a…
The Lebwohl-Lasher model of uniaxial liquid crystals with (\textit{n} = 3, \textit{d} = 2) was reported earlier to undergo a crossover transition to a novel nematic phase at a temperature $T=T_{n}$. This phase has unbound topological…
We study the influence of topology on the quench dynamics of a system driven across a quantum critical point. We show how the appearance of certain edge states, which fully characterise the topology of the system, dramatically modifies the…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
Topological defects play a key role in two-dimensional active nematics, and a transient role in two-dimensional active polar fluids. In this paper, we study both the transient and long-time behavior of defects in two-dimensional active…
Computer simulations are presented of the isotropic-to-nematic transition in a liquid crystal confined between two parallel plates a distance H apart. The plates are neutral and do not impose any anchoring on the particles. Depending on the…
The dynamics of active smectic liquid crystals confined on a spherical surface is explored through an active phase field crystal model. Starting from an initially randomly perturbed isotropic phase, several types of topological defects are…
The translational order in a three-dimensional lattice pinned by hopping defects is studied. It is suggested that the equilibrium state of the lattice crosses from a glass to a crystal on the rate of hopping. It is argued that such a…
In this paper, we consider the knot complement problem for not null-homologous knots in homology lens spaces. Let $M$ be a homology lens space with $H_1(M; \mathbb{Z}) \cong \mathbb{Z}_p$ and $K$ a not null-homologous knot in $M$. We show…