Related papers: Geometric frustration and compatibility conditions…
Relying on symmetry considerations appropriate for helical biopolymers such as DNA and filamentous actin, we argue that crystalline packings of mutually repulsive helical macromolecules fall principally into two categories: unfrustrated…
Geometric frustration arises when lattice structure prevents simultaneous minimization of local interactions. It leads to highly degenerate ground states and, subsequently, complex phases of matter such as water ice, spin ice and frustrated…
Geometric frustration is an approach to the glass transition based upon the consideration of locally favoured structures (LFS), which are geometric motifs which minimise the local free energy. Geometric frustration proposes that a…
The director configuration of disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external magnetic field is evaluated. Our method is a combination of a polynomial expansion for the director and of further analytical…
We study two-dimensional equilibrium configurations of nematic liquid crystal (NLC) director in a cell confined between two parallel surfaces: a planar surface and a spatially modulated one. The relief of the modulated surface is described…
A two-dimensional or quasi-two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal refers to a surface confined system. When such a system is further confined by external line boundaries or excluded from internal line boundaries, the nematic directors form…
Elastic constants of splay K_11, twist K_22, and bend K_33 of nematic liquid crystals are often assumed to be equal to each other in order to simplify the theoretical description of complex director fields. Here we present examples of how…
Using Monte Carlo simulation, we study a fluid of two-dimensional hard rods inside a small circular cavity bounded by a hard wall, from the dilute regime to the high-density, layering regime. Both planar and homeotropic anchoring of the…
Identifying the regions responsible for plastic flow in amorphous solids remains an open problem, since structural disorder seems to prevent the direct application of concepts such as dislocations, topological defects that successfully…
Geometry and topology play a fundamental role in determining pattern formation on 2D surfaces in condensed matter physics. For example, local positive Gaussian curvature of a 2D surface attracts positive topological defects in a liquid…
Liquid crystals generally support orientational singularities of the director field known as topological defects. These latter modifiy transport properties in their vicinity as if the geometry was non-Euclidean. We present a state of the…
The interplay between Kondo effect, indirect magnetic interaction and geometrical frustration is studied in the Kondo lattice on the one-dimensional zigzag ladder. Using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG), the ground state and…
We theoretically investigate under what conditions the director field in a spindle-shaped nematic droplet or tactoid obtains a twisted, parity-broken structure. By minimizing the sum of the bulk elastic and surface energies, we show that a…
Recent experiments have reported a novel splay nematic phase, which has alternating domains of positive and negative splay. To model this phase, previous studies have considered a 1D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a…
Understanding geometric frustration of ordered phases in two-dimensional condensed matters on curved surfaces is closely related to a host of scientific problems in condensed matter physics and materials science. Here we show how…
Geometrical frustration describes situations where interactions are incompatible with the lattice geometry and stabilizes exotic phases such as spin liquids. Whether geometrical frustration of magnetic interactions in metals can induce…
Nematic liquid crystals possess three different phases: isotropic, uniaxial, and biaxial. The ground state of most nematics is either isotropic or uniaxial, depending on the external temperature. Nevertheless, biaxial domains have been…
Ordered phases on curved substrates experience a complex interplay of ordering and intrinsic curvature, commonly producing frustration and singularities. This is an especially important issue in crystals as ever-smaller scale materials are…
Geometric frustration is a widespread phenomenon in physics, materials science, and biology, occurring when the geometry of a system prevents local interactions from being all accommodated. The resulting manifold of nearly degenerate…
A Self Consistent Field Theory description of equilibrium, but non uniform, configurations adopted by semi flexible liquid crystal molecules is presented. Two cases are considered, isotropic-nematic phase boundaries, and topological defects…