Related papers: Topological colloids
Colloids play an important role in fundamental science as well as in nature and technology. They have had a strong impact on the fundamental understanding of statistical physics. For example, colloids have helped to obtain a better…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…
Morphogenesis emerges from dynamic feedback among geometry, mechanics, and chemistry; however, disentangling these contributions in living systems remains challenging. Here, we focus on the interplay between geometry and mechanics by…
Polar solitons, i.e., solitonic waves accompanying asymmetry of geometry or phase, have garnered attention in polar systems, such as ferroelectric or magnetoelectric materials, where they play a critical role in topological transitions and…
The field of topological photonics emerged as one of the most promising areas for applications in transformative technologies: possible applications are in topological lasers or quantum optics interfaces. Nevertheless, efficient and simple…
Liquid crystals (LCs) form an extremely rich range of self-assembled topological structures with artificially or naturally created topological defects. Some of the main applications of LCs are various optical and photonic devices, where…
The study of topological phases of light suggests novel opportunities for creating robust optical structures and on-chip photonic devices which are immune against scattering losses and structural disorder. However, many recent…
Cultured stem cells have become a standard platform not only for regenerative medicine and developmental biology but also for biophysical studies. Yet, the characterization of cultured stem cells at the level of morphology and macroscopic…
We study the phase behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal shells with different geometries. We compare the cases of tangential and no anchoring at the surface, focussing on the former case, which leads to a competition between the…
Topology establishes a unifying framework for a diverse range of scientific areas including particle physics, cosmology, and condensed matter physics. One of the most fascinating manifestations of topology in the context of condensed matter…
Torons are three-dimensional double-twist solitons in chiral nematic liquid crystals that form localised director configurations protected by topology and bounded by closed defect loops. They behave as particle-like entities while retaining…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
Toroidal vortices in fluid and gas dynamics underpin a broad spectrum of scientific and technological fields, from elementary particle physics to condensed matter systems, and have recently garnered significant attention in optics because…
This monograph introduces key concepts and problems in the new research area of Periodic Geometry and Topology for materials applications.Periodic structures such as solid crystalline materials or textiles were previously classified in…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…
Quadrupole topological phases, exhibiting protected boundary states that are themselves topological insulators of lower dimensions, have recently been of great interest. Extensions of these ideas from current tight binding models to…
Topological surface states, a new kind of electronic state of matter, have recently been observed on the cleaved surfaces of crystals of a handful of small band gap semiconductors. The underlying chemical factors that enable these states…
For many materials, a precise knowledge of their dispersion spectra is insufficient to predict their ordered phases and physical responses. Instead, these materials are classified by the geometrical and topological properties of their…
Outermost occupied electron shells of chemical elements can have symmetries resembling that of monopoles, dipoles, quadrupoles and octupoles corresponding to filled s-, p-, d- and forbitals. Theoretically, elements with hexadecapolar outer…