Related papers: Defects in vertically vibrated monolayers of cylin…
We investigate experimentally the collective behavior of a wet granular monolayer under vertical vibrations. The spherical particles are partially wet such that there are short-ranged attractive interactions between adjacent particles. As…
Composed of square particles, the tetratic phase is characterised by a four-fold symmetry with quasi-long-range orientational order but no translational order. We construct the elastic free energy for tetratics and find a closed form…
Disclinations or disclination clusters in smectic C freely suspended films with topological charges larger than one are unstable. They disintegrate, preferably in a spatially symmetric fashion, into single defects with individual charges…
Recent experimental observations have demonstrated interesting instability phenomenon during thermal drawing of microstructured glass/polymer fibers, and these observations motivate us to examine surface-tension-driven instabilities in…
We address the formation of topological states in twisted circular waveguide arrays and find that twisting leads to important differences of the fundamental properties of new vortex solitons with opposite topological charges that arise in…
We investigate the influence of curvature and topology on crystalline wrinkling patterns in generic elastic bilayers. Our numerical analysis predicts that the total number of defects created by adiabatic compression exhibits universal…
Steady state dynamics of clustering, long range order, and inelastic collapse are experimentally observed in vertically shaken granular monolayers. At large vibration amplitudes, particle correlations show only short range order like…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
We study an experimental system of hard granular squares in two dimensions, energized by vibration. The interplay of order in the orientations and positions of anisotropic particles allows for a rich set of phases. We measure the structure…
Symmetry and topology are two fundamental aspects of many quantum states of matter. Recently, new topological materials, higher-order topological insulators, were discovered, featuring, e.g., bulk-edge-corner correspondence that goes beyond…
A line of hard spheres confined by a transverse harmonic potential, with hard walls at its ends, exhibits a variety of buckled structures as it is compressed longitudinally. Here we show that these may be conveniently observed in a rotating…
We investigate the dynamics of an ensemble of inelastic hard spheres confined between two horizontal plates separated a distance smaller than twice the diameter of the particles, in such a way that the system is quasi-two-dimensional. The…
We develop a new method to isolate localized defects from extended vibrational modes in disordered solids. This method augments particle interactions with an artificial potential that acts as a high-pass filter: it preserves small-scale…
Monolayers of anisotropic cells exhibit long-ranged orientational order and topological defects. During the development of organisms, orientational order often influences morphogenetic events. However, the linkage between the mechanics of…
Structural organization and correlations are studied in very large packings of equally sized acrylic spheres, reconstructed in three-dimensions by means of X-ray computed tomography. A novel technique, devised to analyze correlations among…
We report a kinetic Monte Carlo modeling study of nanocrystal layer sintering. Features that are of interest for the dynamics of the layer as a whole, especially the morphology of the evolving structure, are considered. It is found that the…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
The precise theoretical determination of the geometrical parameters of molecules at the minima of their potential energy surface and of the corresponding vibrational properties are of fundamental importance for the interpretation of…
We study the organization of topological defects in a system of nematogens confined to the two-dimensional sphere (S^2). We first perform Monte Carlo simulations of a fluid system of hard rods (spherocylinders) living in the tangent plane…
We report on the emergence of stable self-propelled bound defects in monolayers of active nematics, which form virtual full-integer topological defects in the form of vortices and asters. Through numerical simulations and analytical…