Related papers: Surface alignment disorder and pseudo-Casimir forc…
We extend the force-level ECNLE theory to treat the spatial gradients of the alpha relaxation time and glass transition temperature, and the corresponding film-averaged quantities, to the geometrically asymmetric case of finite thickness…
Recent experimental realizations of the critical Casimir effect have been implemented by monitoring colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture near demixing and exposed to a chemically structured substrate. In particular,…
The disorder and layer transitions in the interface between an Ising spin-1/2 film denoted $(n)$, and an Ising spin-1 film denoted $(m)$, are studied using Monte Carlo simulations. The effects of both an external magnetic field, acting only…
We analyze the fluctuations in particle positions and inter-particle forces in disordered jammed crystals in the limit of weak disorder. We demonstrate that such athermal systems are fundamentally different from their thermal counterparts,…
We study theoretically the formation of long-wavelength instability patterns observed at spreading of nematic droplets on liquid substrates. The role of surface-like elastic terms such as saddle-splay and anchoring in nematic films of…
Differential magneto-optical imaging of the vortex-lattice melting process in Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_8 crystals reveals unexpected effects of quenched disorder on the broadening of the first-order phase transition. The melting patterns show that…
We investigate the effect of quenched surface charge disorder on electrostatic interactions between two charged surfaces in the presence of dielectric inhomogeneities and added salt. We show that in the linear weak-coupling regime (i.e., by…
We study the interaction of two parallel rigid cylinders on the surface of a thin elastic film supported on a pool of liquid. The excess energy of the surface due to the curvature of the stretched film induces attraction of the cylinders…
Soft materials with layered structure such as membranes, block copolymers, and smectics exhibit intriguing morphologies with nontrivial curvatures. We report on restructuring the Gaussian and mean curvatures of smectic A films with free…
The known ground state of ultrathin smectic films confined to the surface of a sphere is described by four +1/2 defects assembled on a great circle and a director which follows geodesic lines. Using a simple perturbative approach we show…
We study the effects of distinct types of quenched disorder in the contact process (CP) with a competitive dynamics on bipartite sublattices. In the model, the particle creation depends on its first and second neighbors and the extinction…
In a recent study [Phys. Rev. E \textbf{94}, 022103 (2016)] it has been shown that, for a fluid film subject to critical adsorption, the resulting critical Casimir force (CCF) may significantly depend on the thermodynamic ensemble. Here, we…
Using general scaling arguments combined with mean-field theory we investigate the critical ($T \simeq T_c$) and off-critical ($T\ne T_c$) behavior of the Casimir forces in fluid films of thickness $L$ governed by dispersion forces and…
The stick-slip phenomenon widely exists in contact mechanics, from the macroscale to the nanoscale. During cholesteric-nematic unwinding by external fields, there is controversy regarding the role of planar surface anchoring, which may…
Suppression of the critical temperature in homogeneously disordered superconducting films is a consequence of the disorder-induced enhancement of Coulomb repulsion. We demonstrate that for the majority of thin films studied now this effect…
In this work the effect of amorphous substrate on crystallization is addressed. By performing Monte-Carlo simulations of solid on solid models we explore the effect of the disorder on crystal growth. The disorder is introduced via local…
By introducing finite size surface and interfacial excess quantities, interactions between interfaces are shown to modify the usual surface premelting phenomenon. It is the case of surface melting of a thin solid film s deposited on a…
We derive exact results for stress correlations in near-crystalline systems in two and three dimensions. We study energy minimized configurations of particles interacting through Harmonic as well as Lennard-Jones potentials, for varying…
We investigate the pseudo-Casimir force in a slab of material composed of nematically ordered long polymers. We write the total mesoscopic energy together with the constraint connecting the local density and director fluctuations and…
Using nCB films adsorbed on MoS 2 substrates studied by x-ray diffraction, optical microscopy and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, we demonstrate that ordered interfaces with well-defined orientations of adsorbed dipoles induce planar…