Related papers: Topological defects in cholesteric liquid crystal …
In experiments which take a liquid crystal rapidly from the isotropic to the nematic phase, a dense tangle of defects is formed. In nematics, there are in principle both line and point defects (``hedgehogs''), but no point defects are…
There are two prominent applications of the mathematical concept of topology to the physics of materials: band topology, which classifies different topological insulators and semimetals, and topological defects that represent immutable…
Our previous molecular dynamic simulation studies of simple two-dimensional (2D) systems \cite{matt_big} suggested that both geometrical defects (localized, large-amplitude deviations from hexagonal ordering) and topological defects…
Many solid materials and liquid crystals exhibit geometric frustration, meaning that they have an ideal local structure that cannot fill up space. For that reason, the global phase must be a compromise between the ideal local structure and…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
We theoretically investigate into the effects of the incidence angles in light transmission of cholesteric liquid crystal two-layer sandwich structures with twist defects created by rotation of the one layer about the helical axis.The…
We study a chemically active binary mixture undergoing phase separation and show that under non-equilibrium conditions, stable liquid spherical shells can form via a spinodal instability in the droplet center. A single liquid shell tends to…
The persistent dynamics in systems out of equilibrium, particularly those characterized by annihilation and creation of topological defects, is known to involve complicated spatiotemporal processes and is deemed difficult to control. Here…
The description of point defects in chiral liquid crystals via topological methods requires the introduction of singular contact structures, a generalisation of regular contact structures where the plane field may have singularities at…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
The emergence of new techniques for the fabrication of nematic droplets with nontrivial topology provides new routes for the assembly of responsive devices. Here we perform a numerical study of spherical nematic droplets on fibres. We…
The best-understood crystal ordering transition is that of two-dimensional freezing, which proceeds by the rapid eradication of lattice defects as the temperature is lowered below a critical threshold. But crystals that assemble on closed…
The motion of topological defects is an important feature of the dynamics of all liquid crystals, and is especially conspicuous in active liquid crystals. Understanding defect motion is a challenging theoretical problem, because the…
We theoretically study the conformations of a helical semi-flexible filament confined to a flat surface. This squeezed helix exhibits a variety of unexpected shapes resembling circles, waves or spirals depending on the material parameters.…
Systems with holes, such as colloidal handlebodies and toroidal droplets, have been studied in the nematic liquid crystal (NLC) 4-cyano-4'-pentylbiphenyl (5CB): both point and ring topological defects can occur within each hole and around…
Cholesteric Liquid Crystals (CLCs), subject to externally applied magnetic fields and confined between two parallel planar surfaces with strong homeotropic anchoring conditions, are found to undergo transitions to different types of…
Crystalline symmetries give rise to topological invariants that can distinguish quantum phases of matter. Understanding these in strongly interacting systems is an ongoing research direction requiring non-perturbative methods. Recent…
We describe the basic properties and consequences of introducing active stresses, with principal direction along the local director, in cholesteric liquid crystals. The helical ground state is found to be linearly unstable to extensile…