Related papers: Binding self-propelled topological defects in acti…

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…

A previously unknown instability creates space-filling lattices of 3D vortices in linearly-stable, rotating, stratified shear flows. The instability starts from an easily-excited critical layer. The layer intensifies by drawing energy from…

We show that a magnetic line defect on the surface of a topological insulator generically supports two distinct branches of spin-polarized and current carrying one-dimensional bound states. We identify the components of magnetic scattering…

Discrete symmetries are spatially ubiquitous but are often hidden in internal states of systems where they can have especially profound consequences. In this work we create and verify exotic magnetic phases of atomic spinor Bose-Einstein…

Crystallography typically studies collections of point particles whose interaction forces are the gradient of a potential. Lifting this assumption generically gives rise in the continuum limit to a form of elasticity with additional moduli…

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 discover an instability mechanism in suspensions of self-propelled particles that does not involve active stress. Instead, it is driven by a subtle interplay of inertia, swimmer motility, and concentration fluctuations, through a crucial…

Higher-form symmetries are a valuable tool for classifying topological phases of matter. However, emergent higher-form symmetries in interacting many-body quantum systems are not typically exact due to the presence of topological defects.…

While active systems possess notable potential to form the foundation of new classes of autonomous materials, designing systems that can extract functional work from active surroundings has proven challenging. In this work, we extend these…

Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…

Topological phases of matter can support fractionalized quasi-particles localized at topological defects. The current understanding of these exotic excitations, based on the celebrated bulk-defect correspondence, typically relies on crude…

Topological point defects on orientationally ordered spheres, and on deformable fluid vesicles have been partly motivated by their potential applications in creating super-atoms with directional bonds through functionalization of the…

We study two-component spatial optical solitons carrying an angular momentum and propagating in a self-focusing saturable nonlinear medium. When one of the components is small, such vector solitons can be viewed as a self-trapped vortex…

Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…

We discover that a spatially localized gain supports stable vortex solitons in media with cubic nonlinearity and two-photon absorption. The interplay between nonlinear losses and gain in amplifying rings results in suppression of otherwise…

Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton…

The basic building blocks of many forms of optical topologies are particle-like singularities in phase and polarisation, giving rise to lines of darkness that weave complex threads in 3D space. Although known for half a century since…

The stability of two-dimensional bright vortex solitons in a media with focusing cubic and defocusing quintic nonlinearities is investigated analytically and numerically. It is proved that above some critical beam powers not only one- and…

We study dry, dense active nematics at both particle and continuous levels. Specifically, extending the Boltzmann-Ginzburg-Landau approach, we derive well-behaved hydrodynamic equations from a Vicsek-style model with nematic alignment and…

We use continuum simulations to study the impact of anisotropic hydrodynamic friction on the emergent flows of active nematics. We show that, depending on whether the active particles align with or tumble in their collectively self-induced…