Related papers: A One-Dimensional Variational Problem for Choleste…
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…
Elastic properties of soft, three-dimensional dimers, interacting through site-site n-inverse-power potential, are determined by computer simulations at zero temperature. The degenerate crystal of dimers exhibiting (Gaussian) size…
In complex crystals close to melting or at finite temperatures, different types of defects are ubiquitous and their role becomes relevant in the mechanical response of these solids. Conventional elasticity theory fails to provide a…
We analyze an elastic surface energy which was recently introduced by G. Napoli and L.Vergori to model thin films of nematic liquid crystals. We show how a novel approach that takes into account also the extrinsic properties of the surfaces…
We study the switching dynamics in two-domain and four-domain twisted nematic liquid crystal devices. The equilibrium configuration of these devices involves the coexistence of regions characterised by different handedness of the inherent…
Nematic liquid crystals are well modeled as a fluid of rigid rods. Starting from this model, we use a Poisson-bracket formalism to derive the equations governing the dynamics of nematic liquid crystals. We treat the spin angular momentum…
We analyse an energy minimisation problem recently proposed for modelling smectic-A liquid crystals. The optimality conditions give a coupled nonlinear system of partial differential equations, with a second-order equation for the…
We derive expressions for the lowest nonlinear elastic constants of amorphous solids in athermal conditions (up to third order), in terms of the interaction potential between the constituent particles. The effect of these constants cannot…
Using tools and concepts from contact topology we show that non-vanishing twist implies conservation of the layer structure in cholesteric liquid crystals. This leads to a number of additional topological invariants for cholesteric…
Topological defects are distinctive signatures of liquid crystals. They profoundly affect the viscoelastic behavior of the fluid by constraining the orientational structure in a way that inevitably requires global changes not achievable…
In this paper we present two atomistic models for the energy of a one-dimensional elastic crystal. We assume that the macroscopic displacement equals the microscopic one. The energy of the first model is given by a two-body interaction…
Chromonic liquid crystals (CLCs) are lyotropic materials which are attracting growing interest for their adaptability to living systems. A considerable body of works has been devoted to exploring their properties and applications. In this…
The dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional isotropic droplet in a cholesteric liquid crystal medium under symmetric shear flow is studied by lattice Boltzmann simulations. We consider a geometry in which the flow direction is along the axis of…
The ground state of chromonic liquid crystals, as revealed by a number of recent experiments, is quite different from that of ordinary nematic liquid crystals: it is twisted instead of uniform. The common explanation provided for this state…
We analyse a recent generalised free-energy for liquid crystals posited by Virga and falling in the class of quartic functionals in the spatial gradients of the nematic director. We review some known interesting solutions, i. e., uniform…
Expressions are obtained for force and couple densities and stress tensors in macroscopic models for nematic liquid crystals subjected to electric fields. The coupling between the liquid crystal orientational properties and the electric…
We generalize the shape optimization problem for the existence of stable equilibrium configurations of nematic and cholesteric liquid crystal drops surrounded by an isotropic solution to include a broader family of admissible domains with…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
Unit-vector fields $\nvec$ on a convex polyhedron $P$ subject to tangent boundary conditions provide a simple model of nematic liquid crystals in prototype bistable displays. The equilibrium and metastable configurations correspond to…
We study compressible and incompressible nonlinear elasticity variational problems in a general context. Our main result gives a sufficient condition for an equilibrium to be a global energy minimizer, in terms of convexity properties of…