Related papers: Nonlinear Coherent Structures in Granular Crystals
The discovery of novel solid-state materials, such as electrocatalysts, super-ionic conductors, or photovoltaic materials, plays a critical role in addressing various global challenges. It has, for instance, the potential to significantly…
Granular materials such as sand, powders, foams etc. are ubiquitous in our daily life, as well as in industrial and geotechnical applications. Although these disordered systems form stable structures if unperturbed, in practice they do…
We investigate the ordering properties of vertically-vibrated monolayers of granular cylinders in a circular container at high packing fraction. In line with previous works by other groups, we identify liquid-crystalline ordering behaviour…
The modeling of the elastic properties of granular or nanoscale systems requires the foundations of the theory of elasticity to be revisited, as one explores scales at which this theory may no longer hold. The only cases for which a…
We report the experimental observation of discrete breathers in a one-dimensional diatomic granular crystal composed of compressed elastic beads that interact via Hertzian contact. We first characterize their effective linear spectrum both…
We present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
Architected materials achieve unique mechanical properties through precisely engineered microstructures that minimize material usage. However, a key challenge of low-density materials is balancing high stiffness with stable deformability up…
Granular materials -- aggregates of many discrete, disconnected solid particles -- are ubiquitous in natural and industrial settings. Predictive models for their behavior have wide ranging applications, e.g. in defense, mining,…
The dynamical arrest of gels is the consequence of a well defined structural phase transition, leading to the formation of a spanning cluster of bonded particles. The dynamical glass transition, instead, is not accompanied by any clear…
Crystalline materials, with symmetrical and periodic structures, exhibit a wide spectrum of properties and have been widely used in numerous applications across electronics, energy, and beyond. For crystalline materials discovery,…
The competition of depletion attractions and longer-ranged repulsions between colloidal particles in colloid-polymer mixtures leads to the formation of heterogeneous gel-like structures. For instance, gel networks, i.e., states where the…
Thanks to their unique properties, nematic liquid crystals feature a variety of mechanisms for light-matter interactions. For continuous-wave optical excitations, the two dominant contributions stem from reorientational and thermal…
Quasicrystals are unique materials characterized by long-range order without periodicity. They are observed in systems such as metallic alloys, soft matter, and particle simulations. Unlike periodic crystals, which are invariant under…
In complex crystals close to melting or at finite temperatures, different types of defects are ubiquitous and their role becomes relevant in the mechanical response of these solids. Conventional elasticity theory fails to provide a…
The dynamics of soft mechanical metamaterials provides opportunities for many exciting engineering applications. Previous studies often use discrete systems, composed of rigid elements and nonlinear springs, to model the nonlinear dynamic…
Gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers offer unprecedented opportunities to observe novel nonlinear phenomena. The various properties of gases that can be used to fill these fibers give additional degrees of freedom for…
The exciting discovery of topological condensed matter systems has lately triggered a search for their photonic analogs, motivated by the possibility of robust backscattering-immune light transport. However, topological photonic phases have…
A comprehensive analytical theory for nonlinear excitations related to horizontal (longitudinal, acoustic mode) as well as vertical (transverse, optical mode) motion of charged dust grains in a dust crystal is presented. Different types of…
We report on new patterns in high-speed flows of granular materials obtained by means of extensive numerical simulations. These patterns emerge from the destabilization of unidirectional flows upon increase of mass holdup and inclination…
We study the linear evolution of small perturbations in self-gravitating fluid systems in two spatial dimensions; we consider both cylindrical and cartesian (i.e., slab) geometries. The treatment is general, but the application is to…