Related papers: Nematic twist--bend phase in an external field
We consider a microscopic field theoretical approach for interacting active nematic particles. With only steric interactions the self-propulsion strength in such systems can lead to different collective behaviour, e.g., synchronized…
We present a theoretical study of director fields in toroidal geometries with degenerate planar boundary conditions. We find spontaneous chirality: despite the achiral nature of nematics the director configuration show a handedness if the…
Substrates which are chemically or topographically patterned induce a variety of liquid crystal textures. The response of the liquid crystal to competing surface orientations, typical of patterned substrates, is determined by the anisotropy…
Ferroelectric nematic phases are a new class of polar fluids in which spontaneous polarization is directly coupled to the orientational order, providing unique opportunities for creating self-organized materils with spatially modulated…
Frustration is a powerful mechanism in condensed matter systems, driving both order and co plexity. In smectics, the frustration between macroscopic chirality and equally spaced layers generates textures characterised by a proliferation of…
Recent experiments report that the long looked for thermotropic biaxial nematic phase has been finally detected in some thermotropic liquid crystalline systems. Inspired by these experimental observations we concentrate on some elementary…
The interplay between different orders is of fundamental importance in physics. The spontaneous, symmetry-breaking charge order, responsible for the stripe or the nematic phase, has been of great interest in many contexts where strong…
We study the influence of fluctuations in molecular shape on the stability of the biaxial nematic phase by generalizing the mean field model of Mulder and Ruijgrok [Physica A {\bf 113}, 145 (1982)]. We limit ourselves to the case when the…
The transport of slightly deformable chiral objects in a uniform shear flow is investigated. Depending on the equilibrium configuration one finds up to four different asymptotic states that can be distinguished by a lateral drift velocity…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal occupying the exterior region in R^3 outside of a spherical particle, with radial strong anchoring. Within the context of the Landau-de Gennes theory, we study minimizers subject to a strong external…
Anomalous nematic states, recently discovered in ultraclean two-dimensional electron gas, emerge from quantum Hall stripe phases upon further cooling. These states are hallmarked by a local minimum (maximum) in the hard (easy) longitudinal…
A nematic liquid crystal in contact with a grating surface possessing an alternating stripe pattern of locally homeotropic and planar anchoring is studied within the Frank--Oseen model. The combination of both chemical and geometrical…
We present a continuum model for a nematic elastomer network formed in a chiral environment, for instance in the presence of a chiral solvent. When this environment is removed, the network can retain some memory of its chiral genesis. We…
Here we study theoretically the dynamics of a 2D and a 3D isotropic droplet in a nematic liquid crystal under a shear flow. We find a large repertoire of possible nonequilibrium steady states as a function of the shear rate and of the…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…
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…
Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals are formed by achiral molecules with large dipole moments. Its three-dimensional orientational order is universally described as unidirectionally polar. We demonstrate that the ground state of…
Aqueous dispersions of exfoliated, bile-salt stabilized single-wall carbon nanotubes exhibit a first order transition to a nematic liquid-crystalline phase. The nematic phase presents itself in the form of micron-sized nematic droplets also…
We calculate the electron self-energy in a magnetized QED plasma to the leading perturbative order in the coupling constant and to the linear order in an external magnetic field. We find that the chiral asymmetry of the normal ground state…
We construct phase diagrams for charged rodlike colloids within the second-virial approximation as a function of rod concentration, salt concentration, and colloidal charge. Besides the expected isotropic-nematic transition, we also find…