Related papers: Spontaneous sense inversion in helical mesophases
Chiral twisting of the molecular orientation within the layer of a smectic-A liquid crystal has been investigated using circular dichroism spectroscopy. The results indicate that a rotation of the layers away from the alignment direction is…
We investigate the phase behavior of a system of hard equilateral and right-angled triangles in two dimensions using Monte Carlo simulations. Hard equilateral triangles undergo a continuous isotropic-triatic liquid crystal phase transition…
Interference of proximity induced superconducting correlations in mesoscopic metallic rings is sensitive to the magnetic flux $\Phi$ inside these rings. This is the reason for magnetoconductance oscillations in such systems. We detected…
Understanding how nanostructure and nanomechanics influence physical material properties on the micro- and macroscale is an essential goal in soft condensed matter research. Mechanisms governing fragmentation and chirality inversion of…
We explore the rheology and flow-induced morphological changes of cholesteric liquid crystal patterns subject to Poiseuille flow within a slab geometry, and under different anchoring conditions at the wall. Our focus is particularly on the…
Many bacterial species are helical in form, including the widespread pathogen H. pylori. Motivated by recent experiments on H. pylori showing that cell wall synthesis is not uniform, we investigate the possible formation of helical cell…
Helical ribbons arise in many biological and engineered systems, often driven by anisotropic surface stress, residual strain, and geometric or elastic mismatch between layers of a laminated composite. A full mathematical analysis is…
We study the chiral symmetry breaking effects of helical magnetic fields in a simple bottom up AdS/CFT model. We explore the instability of the chirally symmetric solution in the presence of the B field and see how it switches off as the…
It is shown that the electric charge of vortices can result in a helical instability of straight vortex lines in layered superconductors, particularly Bi-based cuprates or organic superconductors. This instability may result in a phase…
The role of the different helical components of the magnetic and velocity fields in the inverse spectral transfer of magnetic helicity is investigated through Fourier shell-to-shell transfer analysis. Both magnetic helicity and energetic…
The oblique helicoidal structure is formed in right-angle cholesterics under the applied electric field. The electric field changes the pitch and cone angle but preserves the single-harmonic modulation of the refractive index. As a result,…
We present experimental measurements of the cholesteric-smectic phase transition of suspensions of charged semiflexible rods as a function of rod flexibility and surface charge. The rod particles consist of the bacteriophage M13 and closely…
Molecular process of polymer collapse was reproduced by isothermal molecular dynamics simulation. The initial polymer chains were obtained by mean of random walks in continuum space. Two potential models were considered to represent short…
We investigate the dynamics of a charged particle confined to move on a toroidal helix while being driven by an external time-dependent electric field. The underlying phase space is analyzed for linearly and circularly polarized fields. For…
I propose a variation of the standard worm--like chain model to account for internal order parameter (helix/coil) fields on the polymer chain. This internal order parameter field influences polymer conformational statistics by locally…
Microgels are soft colloids that, in virtue of their polymeric nature, can react to external stimuli such as temperature or pH by changing their size. The resulting swelling/deswelling transition can be exploited in fundamental research as…
We propose a construction of a cholesteric pitch axis for an arbitrary nematic director field as an eigenvalue problem. Our definition leads to a Frenet-Serret description of an orthonormal triad determined by this axis, the director, and…
This paper deals with a concept for a reconfigurable structure bio-inspired by the cell wall architecture of euglenids, a family of unicellular protists, and based on the relative sliding of adjacent strips. Uniform sliding turns a cylinder…
The observation of chirality is ubiquitous in nature. Contrary to intuition, the population of opposite chiralities is surprisingly asymmetric at fundamental levels. Examples range from parity violation in the subatomic weak force to the…
Magnetic particle hyperthermia, in which colloidal nanostructures are exposed to an alternating magnetic field, is a promising approach to cancer therapy. Unfortunately, the clinical efficacy of hyperthermia has not yet been optimized.…