Related papers: Phase Transitions in Nematics: Textures with Tacto…
Motivated by recently discovered unusual properties of bulk nematic elastomers, we study a phase diagram of liquid-crystalline polymerized phantom membranes, focusing on in-plane nematic order. We predict that such membranes should…
We report a dynamic light scattering study of the fluctuation modes in a thermotropic liquid crystalline mixture of monomer and dimer compounds that exhibits the twist-bend nematic ($\mathrm{N_{TB}}$) phase. The results reveal a spectrum of…
We develop a Q-tensor model of nematic liquid crystals occupying a stationary surface which represents a fluidic material film in space. In addition to the evolution due to Landau--de\,Gennes energy the model includes a tangent viscous…
The properties of liquid crystals can be modelled using an order parameter which describes the variability of the local orientation of rod-like molecules. Defects in the director field can arise due to external factors such as applied…
The twist-bend nematic phase, $N_{\rm TB}$, may be viewed as a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the director $\bf n$ precesses uniformly about an extra director field, $\bf t$. It corresponds to a nematic ground state exhibiting…
Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
Liquid crystals have attracted enormous interest because of the variety of their phases and richness of their application. The interplay of general physical symmetries and specific molecular features generates a myriad of different…
We construct Langevin equations describing the fluctuations of the tensor order parameter $Q_{\alpha\beta}$ in nematic liquid crystals by adding noise terms to time-dependent variational equations that follow from the Ginzburg-Landau-de…
Spontaneous onset of a low temperature topologically ordered phase in a 2-dimensional (2D) lattice model of uniaxial liquid crystal (LC) was debated extensively pointing to a suspected underlying mechanism affecting the RG flow near the…
New theoretical approaches have been developed for studying and quantitatively describing the elastic properties of cubic blue phases in cholesteric liquid crystals. Within the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory, using the simplest…
Field theories predict that phase transitions sequentially breaking continuous and discrete symmetries can generate hybrid topological structures in which defects of different dimensionalities merge. We report experimental and numerical…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
We investigate the connections between some simple Maier-Saupe lattice models, with a discrete choice of orientations of the microscopic directors, and a recent proposal of a two-tensor formalism to describe the phase diagrams of nematic…
Liquid mixtures with a nematogen can undergo both fluid phase separation and a transition from an isotropic to a nematic state. These phase transitions can couple and lead to phase behavior distinct from simple liquid mixtures or pure…
The Landau theory of phase transitions has been re-examined under the framework of a modified mean field theory in ferroelectrics. By doing so, one can see that there are two atomic movements involved in the ferroelectric phase transition;…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit both crystal-like and fluid-like features. In particular, the propagation of an acoustic wave shows an unexpected occurrence of some of the solid-like features at the hydrodynamic level, namely, the…
We predict the existence of a new defect-lattice phase near the nematic - smectic-C (NC) transition. This tilt- analogue of the blue phase is a lattice of double-tilt cylinders. We discuss the structure and stability of the cone phase. We…
Smectic-C elastomers can be prepared by crosslinking, e.g., liquid crystal polymers, in the smectic-A phase followed by a cooling through the smectic-A to smectic-C phase transition. This transition from $D_{\infty h}$ to $C_{2h}$ symmetry…