Related papers: Orientational Phase Transitions and the Assembly o…
We present a generalized Landau-Brazovskii theory for the solidification of chiral molecules on a spherical surface. With increasing sphere radius one encounters first intervals where robust achiral density modulations appear with…
The Landau theory of phase transitions has been productively applied to phase transitions that involve rotational symmetry breaking, such as the transition from an isotropic fluid to a nematic liquid crystal. It even can be applied to the…
Recently, continuum elasticity theory has been applied to explain the shape transition of icosahedral viral capsids - single-protein-thick crystalline shells - from spherical to buckled/faceted as their radius increases through a critical…
It is believed at present that the chiral transition changes from a smooth crossover to a first-order transition at low temperatures and high densities. Such regime is commonly analyzed using effective models since first principle…
A chain of singly-charged particles, confined by a harmonic potential, exhibits a sudden transition to a zigzag configuration when the radial potential reaches a critical value, depending on the particle number. This structural change is a…
A Landau theory is presented for the structural transition of electrically stabilized colloidal crystals under shear. The model suggests that a structural transition from an ordered layered colloidal crystal into a disordered structure…
A general Landau's free energy functional is used to study the dynamics of crystallization during liquid-solid Spinodal Decomposition (SD). The strong length scale selectivity imposed during the early stage of SD induces the appearance of…
We propose a Ginzburg-Landau model for the expansion of a dodecahedral viral capsid during infection or maturation. The capsid is described as a dodecahedron whose faces, meant to model rigid capsomers, are free to move independent of each…
A model predicting the structure of repulsive, spherically symmetric, monodisperse particles confined between two walls is presented. We study the buckling transition of a single flat layer as the double layer state develops. Experimental…
A theoretical study of toroidal membranes with various degrees of intrinsic orientational order is presented at mean-field level. The study uses a simple Ginzburg-Landau style free energy functional, which gives rise to a rich variety of…
The main aim of the paper is to investigate the transitions of the thermohaline circulation in a spherical shell in a parameter regime which only allows transitions to multiple equilibria. We find that the first transition is either…
Quantum spin systems can break time reversal symmetry by developing spontaneous magnetization or spin chirality. However, collinear magnets and chiral spin states are invariant under different symmetries, implying that the order parameter…
The raise of the symmetry breaking mechanism by Landau[1] is a landmark in the studies of phase transitions. The Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition[2-3] and the fractional quantum Hall effect[4], however, are believed to be induced by…
Previous self-assembly experiments on a model icosahedral plant virus have shown that, under physiological conditions, capsid proteins initially bind to the genome through an en masse mechanism and form nucleoprotein complexes in a…
We use a free-energy minimization approach to describe the secular and dynamical instabilities as well as the bifurcations along equilibrium sequences of rotating, self-gravitating fluid systems. Our approach is fully nonlinear and stems…
The succession of suggested mechanisms of solid-state phase transitions - Second-order, Lambda, Martensitic, Displacive, Topological, Order-Disorder, Soft-mode, Incommensurate, Scaling and Quantum - are analyzed and explained why they…
In this work, we attack the problem of "chiral phase instability" ($\chi$PI) in a quantum chromodynamics (QCD) system under a parallel and constant electromagnetic field. The $\chi$PI refers to that: When $I_2\equiv{\bf E\cdot B}$ is larger…
We investigate the chiral phase transition of a QCD-like theory, based the shape change of the effective potential near the critical point. The potential is constructed with the auxiliary field method, and a source term coupled to the field…
We investigate the stability of an inhomogeneous chiral condensed phase against low energy fluctuations about a spatially modulated order parameter. This phase corresponds to the so-called dual chiral density wave in the context of quark…
If a binary liquid mixture, composed of two alternative species with equal amounts, is quenched from a high temperature to a low temperature, below the critical point of demixing, then the mixture will phase separate through a process known…