Related papers: Cross-talk between topological defects in differen…
Topological dislocations in otherwise periodic lattices represent global structural defects that, nevertheless, typically leave the lattice periodicity intact far from the dislocation. Such dislocations arise in diverse physical systems…
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
Grain boundaries in extremely confined colloidal smectics possess a topological fine structure with coexisting nematic and tetratic symmetry of the director field. An alternative way to approach the problem of smectic topology is via the…
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…
How topological defects affect the dynamics of particles hopping between lattice sites of a distorted, two-dimensional crystal is addressed. Perturbation theory and numerical simulations show that weak, short-ranged topological disorder…
When colloidal particles are vertically confined to a gap of between 1.3-1.6 particle diameters, they pack into buckled crystals of particles in either "up" or "down" states. Neighboring particles tend to occupy opposite states, analogous…
Understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind plastic instabilities and shear band formation in amorphous media under applied deformation remains a long-standing challenge. Leveraging on the mathematical concept of topology, we revisit…
Ergodic kinetics, which are critical to equilibrium thermodynamics, can be constrained by a system's topology. We study a model nanomagnetic array in which such constraints visibly affect the behavior. In this system, magnetic excitations…
Topological defects attract much recent interest in high-energy and condensed matter physics because they encode (non-invertible) symmetries and dualities. We study codimension-1 topological defects from a hamiltonian point of view, with…
Topological edge modes are excitations that are localized at the materials' edges and yet are characterized by a topological invariant defined in the bulk. Such bulk-edge correspondence has enabled the creation of robust electronic,…
Colloidal inclusions in nematic fluids induce topological defects that govern their dynamics. These defects create well-understood rheological behavior in passive nematics, but the interplay between colloid-associated defects and…
We study the interplay of topological excitations in stripe phases: charge dislocations, charge loops, and spin vortices. In two dimensions these defects interact logarithmically on large distances. Using a renormalization-group analysis in…
The tenfold classification provides a powerful framework for organizing topological phases of matter based on symmetry and spatial dimension. However, it does not offer a systematic method for transitioning between classes or engineering…
We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…
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 self-propulsion of +1/2 topological defects is a hallmark of active nematic fluids, where the defects are advected by the flow field they themselves generate. In this paper we propose a minimal model for defect self-propulsion in a…
Morphogenesis of living systems involves topological shape transformations which are highly unusual in the inanimate world. Here we demonstrate that a droplet of a nematic liquid crystal changes its equilibrium shape from a simply-connected…
Active matter refers to a broad class of non-equilibrium systems where energy is continuously injected at the level of individual ``particles". These systems exhibit emergent collective behaviors that have no direct thermal-equilibrium…
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…
Topological defects are increasingly being identified in various biological systems, where their characteristic flow fields and stress patterns are associated with continuous active stress generation by biological entities. Here, using…