Related papers: Elastic interactions between topological defects i…
A statistical theory of cholesteric liquid crystals composed of short rigid biaxial molecules is presented. It is derived in the thermodynamic limit at a small density and a small twist. The uniaxial (biaxial) cholesteric phase is regarded…
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…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
Topological defects are singularities within a field that cannot be removed by continuous transformations. The definition of these irregularities requires an ordered reference configuration, calling into question whether they exist in…
We study axially symmetrical 3D skyrmionic particles (torons, hopfions) in a thin homeotropic cell filled with a cholesteric liquid crystal. In this case, the contribution of the chirality term on far distances becomes small and a 3D…
Crystalline assemblages of identical sub-units packed together and elastically bent in the form of a torus have been found in the past ten years in a variety of systems of surprisingly different nature, such as viral capsids, self-assembled…
Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…
Two nematic shells brought in contact coalesce in order to reduce their interfacial tension. This process proceeds through the creation of a liquid neck-like bridge through which the encapsulated fluid flows. Following this topological…
We discuss a class of models for particulate gels in which the particle contacts are described by an effective interaction combining a two-body attraction and a three-body angular repulsion. Using molecular dynamics, we show how varying the…
Understanding the relationship between the microscopic structure and topology of a material and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental challenge across a wide range of systems. Here, we investigate the viscoelasticity of DNA nanostar…
The new free energy functional that describes general elastic interaction between colloidal particles and nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. It generalizes results of the paper \cite{lupe} on the case of arbitrary orientation of…
We develop a theory of point defects in cholesterics and textures in spherical droplets with normal anchoring. The local structure of chiral defects is described by singularity theory and a smectic-like gradient field establishing a nexus…
Topological defects play a central role in the formation and organization of various biological systems. Historically, such nonequilibrium defects have been mainly studied in the context of homogeneous active nematics. Phase-separated…
Topological defects are crucial to the thermodynamics and structure of condensed matter systems. For instance, when incorporated into crystalline membranes like graphene, disclinations with positive and negative topological charge…
When a colloidal particle adheres to a fluid membrane, it induces elastic deformations in the membrane which oppose its own binding. The structural and energetic aspects of this balance are theoretically studied within the framework of a…
We study the phase behaviour of a quasi-two dimensional cholesteric liquid crystal shell. We characterise the topological phases arising close to the isotropic-cholesteric transition, and show that they differ in a fundamental way from…
Crystallography typically studies collections of point particles whose interaction forces are the gradient of a potential. Lifting this assumption generically gives rise in the continuum limit to a form of elasticity with additional moduli…
We study elastic interactions between colloidal particles and deformation landscapes of undulations in a cholesteric liquid crystal under an electric field applied normal to cholesteric layers. The onset of undulation instability is…
Disclination lines in three-dimensional nematic liquid crystals generically form closed loops whose topology is classified by homotopy theory. While this classification successfully captures global topological features, it does not encode…
Topological defects are an essential part of the structure and dynamics of all liquid crystals, and they are particularly important in experiments and simulations on active liquid crystals. In a recent paper, Vromans and Giomi [Soft Matter,…