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We have numerically studied a liquid composed of achiral, bent-shaped molecules built of tangent spheres. The system is known to spontaneously break mirror symmetry, as it forms a macroscopically chiral, twist-bend nematic phase [Phys. Rev.…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
The ground state of chromonic liquid crystals, as revealed by a number of recent experiments, is quite different from that of ordinary nematic liquid crystals: it is twisted instead of uniform. The common explanation provided for this state…
The known ground state of ultrathin smectic films confined to the surface of a sphere is described by four +1/2 defects assembled on a great circle and a director which follows geodesic lines. Using a simple perturbative approach we show…
Instabilities are discussed which take place when a nematic liquid crystal (LC) layer, enclosed between a planar reference plate and a photosensitive substrate, is illuminated with polarized light from the reference side ({\it reverse}…
The order-disorder layering transitions, of the Blume-Capel model, are studied using the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, in the presence of a variable crystal field. For a very low temperature, the results are in good agreement with the…
Monte Carlo simulations of crystal nuclei coexisting with the fluid phase in thermal equilibrium in finite volumes are presented and analyzed, for fluid densities from dense melts to the vapor. Generalizing the lever-rule for two-phase…
We investigate crystal-growth kinetics in the presence of strong shear flow in the liquid, using molecular-dynamics simulations of a binary-alloy model. Close to the equilibrium melting point, shear flow always suppresses the growth of the…
After a brief introduction to several variational problems in the study of shapes of thin thickness structures, we deal with variational problems on 2-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional Euclidian space by using exterior differential…
We study the evolution from a liquid to a crystal phase in two-dimensional curved space. At early times, while crystal seeds grow preferentially in regions of low curvature, the lattice frustration produced in regions with high curvature is…
High-resolution X-ray scattering studies of the nonpolar thermotropic liquid crystal 4-n-pentylphenylthiol-4'-n-octyloxybenzoate (\bar{8}S5) in aerosil gel nano-networks reveal that the aerosil-induced disorder significantly alters both the…
An unresolved issue in the theory of liquid crystals is the molecular basis of the electroclinic effect in the smectic-A phase. Recent x-ray scattering experiments suggest that, in a class of siloxane-containing liquid crystals, an electric…
We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and the formation of patterns in a continuum model of epithelial layers, able to account for the interplay between mechanical activity, lateral adhesion and the $6-$fold orientational order…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation demonstrating that the Smectic B crystalline phase (Cr-B), commonly observed in mesogenic systems of anisotropic molecules, can be formed by a system of identical particles interacting via a…
Fluid molecular ferroelectrics are a new class of organic materials where ferroelectricity is found in conjunction with 3D fluidity whilst still retaining spontaneous polarization values comparable to their traditional solid state…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
In bulk ferroelectric liquid crystals, the molecular director twists in a helix. In narrow cells, this helix can be unwound by an applied electric field or by boundary effects. To describe helix unwinding as a function of both electric…
Phase-ordering dynamics in nematic liquid crystals has been the subject of much active investigation in recent years in theory, experiments and simulations. With a rapid quench from the isotropic to nematic phase a large number of…
Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…
Liquid crystalline phases of matter permeate nature and technology, with examples ranging from cell membranes to liquid-crystal displays. Remarkably, electronic liquid crystal phases can exist in two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) at…