Related papers: Discontinuous order parameters in liquid crystal t…
We investigate fluids of dipolar hard particles by a certain variant of density-functional theory. The proper treatment of the long range of the dipolar interactions yields a contribution to the free energy which favors ferromagnetic order.…
Ordinary nematic liquid crystals are characterized by having a uniform director field as ground state. In such a state, the director is the same everywhere and no distortion is to be seen at all. We give a definition of uniform distortion…
Directional media, such as nematic liquid crystals and ferromagnets, are characterized by their topologically stabilized defects in directional order. In nematics, boundary conditions and surface-treated inclusions often create complex…
Some recent analytical papers have explored limiting behaviors of Landau-deGennes models for liquid crystals in certain extreme ranges of the model parameters: limits of "vanishing elasticity" (in the language of some of these papers) and…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
The liquid state is one of the fundamental and essential states of matter, but its physical understanding is far behind the other states, such as the gas and solid states, due to the difficulties associated with the high density causing…
A consistent, small scale description of plastic motion in a crystalline solid is presented based on a phase field description. By allowing for independent mass motion given by the phase field, and lattice distortion, the solid can remain…
Crystalline defects, such as line-like dislocations, play an important role for the performance and reliability of many metallic devices. Their interaction and evolution still poses a multitude of open questions to materials science and…
Defects arise when nematic liquid crystals are under topological constraints at the boundary. Recently the study of defects has drawn a lot of attention. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between two-dimensional defects and…
The concept of the order parameter is extremely useful in physics. Here, I discuss extensions of this concept to cases when the order parameter is no longer a constant but fluctuates or oscillates in space and time. This allows one to…
How topological defects affect the dynamics of particles hopping between lattice sites of a distorted, two-dimensional crystal is addressed. Perturbation theory and numerical simulations show that weak, short-ranged topological disorder…
We give a description of the intrinsic geometry of elastic distortions in three-dimensional nematic liquid crystals and establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a set of functions to represent these distortions by describing how…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
Liquid crystalline networks (LCNs) are stimuli-responsive materials formed from polymeric chains cross-linked with rod-like mesogenic segments, which, in the nematic phase, align along a non-polar director. A key characteristic of these…
Liquid crystal networks exploit the coupling between the responsivity of liquid-crystalline mesogens, e.g., to electric fields, and the (visco)elastic properties of a polymer network. Because of this, these materials have been put forward…
Dislocations in soft condensed matter systems such as lamellar systems of polymers, liquid crystals and ternary mixtures of oil, water and surfactant (amphiphilic systems) are described in the framework of continuum elastic theory. These…
This chapter is about the modeling of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) and their numerical simulation. We begin with an overview of the basic physics of LCs and discuss some of their many applications. Next, we delve into the modeling…
A continuum field theory approach is presented for modeling elastic and plastic deformation, free surfaces and multiple crystal orientations in non-equilibrium processing phenomena. Many basic properties of the model are calculated…
Topological defects in systems with liquid-crystalline order are crucial in determining their large-scale properties. In active systems, they are known to have properties impossible at equilibrium: for example, $+1/2$ defects in…
The phase-field-crystal model is used to access the structure and thermodynamics of interfaces between two coexisting liquid crystalline phases in two spatial dimensions. Depending on the model parameters there is a variety of possible…