Related papers: Spherical nematics with a threefold valence
We propose a continuum model to describe the molecular alignment in thin nematic shells. By contrast with previous accounts, the two-dimensional free energy, aimed at describing the physics of thin films of nematics deposited on curved…
A nematic liquid crystal confined to the surface of a sphere exhibits topological defects of total charge $+2$ due to the topological constraint. In equilibrium, the nematic field forms four $+1/2$ defects, located at the corners of a…
In two dimensional nematics, topological defects are point like singularities with both a charge and a phase. We study topological defects within curved nematic textures on the surface of a cylinder. This allows us to isolate the effect of…
We present a theoretical study of the director fields and energetics of nematic liquid crystal shells with two pairs of surface defects. The pairs of defects can undergo abrupt transitions between a configuration of maximum separation to at…
We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…
We perform energy spectrum analysis of the active turbulence in 3D bulk active nematic using continuum numerical modelling. Specifically, we calculate the spectra of two main energy contributions---kinetic energy and nematic elastic…
The equilibrium texture of nematic shells is studied as a function of their thickness. For ultrathin shells the ground state has four short 1/2 disclination lines but, as the thickness of the film increases, a three dimensional escaped…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Active nematics are fluids in which the components have nematic symmetry and are driven out of equilibrium due to the microscopic generation of an active stress. When the active stress is high, it drives flows in the nematic and can lead to…
We study the organization of topological defects in a system of nematogens confined to the two-dimensional sphere (S^2). We first perform Monte Carlo simulations of a fluid system of hard rods (spherocylinders) living in the tangent plane…
In this paper we rigorously investigate the emergence of defects on Nematic Shells with genus different from one. This phenomenon is related to a non trivial interplay between the topology of the shell and the alignment of the director…
The transition from a nematic to an isotropic state in a self-closing spherical liquid crystal shell with tangential alignment is a stimulating phenomenon to investigate, as the topology dictates that the shell exhibits local isotropic…
In this work we study a charged particle in the presence of both a continuous distribution of disclinations and a continuous distribution of edge dislocations in the framework of the geometrical theory of defects. We obtain the self-energy…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
We study {{\rm C}$_{60}$} with the use of Thomas-Fermi theory. A spherical shell model is invoked to treat the nuclear potential, where the nuclear and core charges are smeared out into a shell of constant surface charge density. The…
We present results of micromagnetic simulations of thin ferromagnetic nano hemispheroidal shells with sizes ranging from 1 to 50 nm (inside dimensions). Depending on the geometrical and magnetic parameters of the hemispheroidal shell, there…
Active nematics contain topological defects which under sufficient activity move, create and annihilate in a chaotic quasi-steady state, called active turbulence. However, understanding active defects under confinement is an open challenge,…
We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able…
A shape sensitive, variational approach for the matching of surfaces considered as thin elastic shells is investigated. The elasticity functional to be minimized takes into account two different types of nonlinear energies: a membrane…
We derive the effective energy density of thin membranes of liquid crystal elastomers as the Gamma-limit of a widely used bulk model. These membranes can display fine-scale features both due to wrinkling that one expects in thin elastic…