Related papers: The weirdest martensite: Smectic liquid crystal mi…
We study microstructure formation in two nonconvex singularly-perturbed variational problems from materials science, one modeling austenite-martensite interfaces in shape-memory alloys, the other one slip structures in the plastic…
The "flexible boundary condition" method, introduced by Sinclair and coworkers in the 1970s, remains among the most popular methods for simulating isolated two-dimensional crystalline defects, embedded in an effectively infinite atomistic…
A finite volume symplectic manifold is said to have "packing stability" if the only obstruction to symplectically embedding sufficiently small balls is the volume obstruction. Packing stability has been shown in a variety of cases and it…
We establish that equally-spaced smectic configurations enjoy an infinite-dimensional conformal symmetry and show that there is a natural map between them and null hypersurfaces in maximally-symmetric spacetimes. By choosing the appropriate…
The sliding columnar phase is a new liquid-crystalline phase of matter composed of two-dimensional smectic lattices stacked one on top of the other. This phase is characterized by strong orientational but weak positional correlations…
We compute the mod-2 cohomology ring for three-dimensional (3D) space groups and establish a connection between them and the lattice structure of crystals with space group symmetry. This connection allows us to obtain a complete set of…
We construct integrable boundary conditions for sl(2) coset models with central charges c=3/2-12/(m(m+2)) and m=3,4,... The associated cylinder partition functions are generating functions for the branching functions but these boundary…
We present a theory of the elasticity and fluctuations of the Smectic A and C phases in uniaxial, anisotropic disordered environments, e.g., stretched aerogel. We find that, bizarrely, the low-temperature, lower-symmetry Smectic $C$ phase…
Smectic order has been generated in superconducting Nb films with two-fold symmetry arrays of symmetric pinning centers. Magnetic fields applied perpendicularly to the films develop a vortex matter smectic phase that is easily detected when…
The smectic C (smC) phase represents a unique class of liquid crystal phases characterised by the layered arrangement of molecules with tilted orientations with respect to layer normals. Building upon the real-valued tensorial smectic A…
A nonlinear model due to Soddemann et al. [37] and Stewart [38] describing incompressible smectic-A liquid crystals under flow is studied. In comparison to previously considered models, this particular model takes into account possible…
We consider a system of spherical particles interacting by means of a pair potential equal to a finite constant for interparticle distances smaller than the sphere diameter and zero outside. The model may be a prototype for the interaction…
The implementation of boundary conditions is among the most challenging parts of modeling fluid flow through channels and complex media. Here, we show that the existing methods to deal with liquid-wall interactions using multicomponent…
The homotopy theory of topological defects in ordered media fails to completely characterize systems with broken translational symmetry. We argue that the problem can be understood in terms of the lack of rotational Goldstone modes in such…
We study magnetic geometries with Lifshitz and/or hyperscaling violation exponents (both with a hard wall cutoff in the IR and a smooth black brane horizon) which have a complex scalar field which couples to the magnetic field. The complex…
Focal conic domains (FCDs) in smectic-A liquid crystals have drawn much attention both for their exquisitely structured internal form and for their ability to direct the assembly of micro- and nanomaterials in a variety of patterns. A key…
We show that discotics, lying deep in the columnar phase, can exhibit an x-ray scattering pattern which mimics that of a somewhat unusual smectic liquid crystal. This exotic, new glassy phase of columnar liquid crystals, which we call a…
Understanding the physics of supercooled liquids near glassy transition remains one of the major challenges in condensed matter science. There has been long recognized that supercooled liquids have spatially dynamical heterogeneity whose…
We formulate a simple Landau type model describing macroscopic behaviour recently discovered new smectic phases composed of achiral bent-shaped molecules. Films of such smectics exhibit three types of ordering related to dipole…
Composed of microscopic layers that stack along one direction while maintaining fluid-like positional disorder within layers, smectics are excellent systems for exploring topology, defects and geometric memory in complex confining…