Related papers: Photomechanical coupling in photoactive nematic el…
Nematic elastomers are a particular class of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) that exhibit both liquid-crystalline order and rubber (entropic) elasticity. This combination makes them stimuli-responsive soft materials with a number of…
The influence of the molecular structure of the nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on the photoalignment process at the NLC -- polymer interface has been investigated experimentally. NLCs having exclusively phenyl-, or cyclohexane rings in the…
We investigate dynamic magneto-optic effects in a ferromagnetic nematic liquid crystal experimentally and theoretically. Experimentally we measure the magnetization and the phase difference of the transmitted light when an external magnetic…
Integrated photoelasticity is investigated for a soft material subjected to a three-dimensional stress state. In the experiment, a solid sphere is pressed against a gelatin gel (Young's modulus is about 4.2 kPa) that deforms up to 4.5 mm…
We subject a monodomain cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer to uniaxial strain perpendicular to its helical axis and study the response of its texture to deformation. A combination of mechanical, optical and X-ray scattering measurements…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Mesogenic dimers in the twist-bend nematic phase exhibit much higher flexoelectric polarization than in their uniform nematic phase. In order to theoretically investigate this data, we extend the symmetry based linear elastic theory of the…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
Observing few-photon optomechanical effects remains a significant challenge in optomechanical systems. To investigate intrinsic radiation-pressure-induced nonlinear effects in the few-photon regime, it is essential to strengthen the…
Active nematics are microscopically driven liquid crystals that exhibit dynamical steady states characterized by the creation and annihilation of topological defects. Motivated by experimental realizations of such systems made of biopolymer…
Electronically-driven nematic order breaks the rotational symmetry of a system, e.g., through a Pomeranchuk instability of the Fermi surface, with a concomitant distortion of the lattice. As a result, in a metal, the nematic collective mode…
Compressive mechanical stress exceeding a critical value leads to the formation of periodic surface buckling patterns in film-substrate systems. A comprehensive understanding of this buckling phenomenon is desired in applications where the…
We investigate the finite bending and the associated bending instability of an incompressible dielectric slab subject to a combination of applied voltage and axial compression, using nonlinear electro-elasticity theory and its incremental…
We introduce a new dynamic light scattering method, termed photon correlation imaging, which enables us to resolve the dynamics of soft matter in space and time. We demonstrate photon correlation imaging by investigating the slow dynamics…
Ultrafast optical excitation is known to destabilize long-range order in correlated systems, yet experiments have also reported the emergence of metastable phases, in some cases with enhanced critical temperatures. The microscopic origin of…
Electroactive soft elastomers require huge electric field for a meaningful actuation. We demonstrate that this can be dramatically reduced and giant deformations can be produced by application of suitably chosen heterogeneous actuators. The…
A propagating "beam" triggering a local phase transition in a nematic elastomer sets it into a crawling motion, which may morph due to buckling. We consider the motion of the various configurations of slender rods and thin stripes with both…
It was recently demonstrated that the connectivities of bands emerging from zero frequency in dielectric photonic crystals are distinct from their electronic counterparts with the same space groups. We discover that, in an AB-layer-stacked…
We provide a minimal model for an active nematic film in contact with both a solid substrate and a passive isotropic fluid, and explore its dynamics in one and two dimensions using a combination of hybrid Lattice Boltzmann simulations and…
Instabilities are discussed which take place when a nematic liquid crystal (LC) layer, enclosed between a planar reference plate and a photosensitive substrate, is illuminated with polarized light from the reference side ({\it reverse}…