Related papers: Waltzing route towards double-helix formation in c…
We study the structure and melting of a classical bilayer system of dipoles, in a setup where the dipoles are oriented perpendicular to the planes of the layers and the density of dipoles is the same in each layer. Due to the anisotropic…
Exploring structural order in disordered systems including liquids and glasses is an intriguing but challenging issue in condensed matter physics. Here we construct a new parameter based on the angular distribution function of particles and…
Structural transitions and the melting behavior of crystalline poly(ethylene oxide),(CH2-CH2-O)n, (PEO) has been investigated using fully atomistic, constant pressure-constant temperature (NPT) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Melting…
The interplay between the chirality of many biological molecules and the energy injected at small length-scales as the result of biological processes is at the base of the life of the cells. With the aim of unveiling the connection between…
We report on the buckling and subsequent collapse of orthotropic elastic spherical shells under volume and pressure control. Going far beyond what is known for isotropic shells, a rich morphological phase space with three distinct regimes…
Biomembranes, primarily composed of lipid bilayers, are not merely passive barriers but dynamic and complex materials whose shapes are governed by the principles of soft matter physics. This review explores the shape problem in biomembranes…
We report on the results of molecular dynamics simulation (MD) studies of the classical two-dimensional electron crystal in the presence disorder. Our study is motivated by recent experiments on this system in modulation doped semiconductor…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
When a nematic liquid crystal is confined in a porous medium with strong anchoring conditions, topological defects, called disclinations, are stably formed with numerous possible configurations. Since the energy barriers between them are…
The critical buckling characteristics of hydrostatically pressurized complete spherical shells filled with an elastic medium are demonstrated. A model based on small deflection thin shell theory, the equations of which are solved in…
The behaviour of materials under spatial confinement is sensitively dependent on the nature of the confining boundaries. In two dimensions, confinement within a hard circular boundary inhibits the hexagonal ordering observed in bulk systems…
We analytically and numerically characterize the structure of hard-sphere fluids in order to review various geometrical frustration scenarios of the glass transition. We find generalized polytetrahedral order to be correlated with…
Recently, it has been demonstrated [Magee et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 207802 (2006)] that isolated, square-well homopolymers can spontaneously break chiral symmetry and freeze into helical structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This…
Based on dynamic renormalization group techniques, this letter analyzes the effects of external stochastic perturbations on the dynamical properties of cholesteric liquid crystals, studied in presence of a random magnetic field. Our…
We study the cohesive energy and elastic properties as well as normal modes of the Wigner and bubble crystals of the two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in higher Landau levels. Using a simple Hartree-Fock approach, we show that the…
Particle sedimentation in the vicinity of a fixed horizontal vortex with time-dependent intensity can be chaotic, provided gravity is sufficient to displace the particle cloud while the vortex is off or weak. This "stretch, sediment and…
We study by simulation the physics of two colloidal particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The effective force between the pair is attractive at short range and favors…
A line of hard spheres confined by a transverse harmonic potential, with hard walls at its ends, exhibits a variety of buckled structures as it is compressed longitudinally. Here we show that these may be conveniently observed in a rotating…
We have investigated the relationship between the morphology of helical particles and the features of the cholesteric (N$^\ast $) phase that they form. Using an Onsager-like theory, applied to systems of hard helices, we show that the…
We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the…