Related papers: A One-Dimensional Variational Problem for Choleste…
We analyze a model problem based on highly disparate elastic constants that we propose in order to understand corners and cusps that form on the boundary between the nematic and isotropic phases in a liquid crystal. For a bounded planar…
Systems of elongated molecules, doped with small amounts of molecules lacking mirror symmetry can form macroscopically twisted cholesteric liquid crystal phases. The aim of this work is to rigorously derive the Oseen-Frank model of…
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 present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
Building a general theoretical framework to describe the microscopic origin of macroscopic chirality in (colloidal) liquid crystals is a long-standing challenge. Here, we combine classical density functional theory with Monte Carlo…
We discuss a 1D variational problem modeling an elastic sheet on water, lifted at one end. Its terms include the membrane and bending energy of the sheet as well as terms due to gravity and surface tension. By studying a suitable…
In equilibrium liquid crystals, chirality leads to a variety of spectacular three-dimensional structures, but chiral and achiral phases with the same broken continuous symmetries have identical long-time, large-scale dynamics. In this…
The problem of the sudden growth and coalescence of voids in elastic media is considered. The Dirichlet energy is minimized among incompressible and invertible Sobolev deformations of a two-dimensional domain having $n$ microvoids of radius…
Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
Chromonics are special classes of nematic liquid crystals, for which a quartic elastic theory seems to be more appropriate than the classical quadratic Oseen-Frank theory. The relaxation dynamics of twist director profiles are known to…
Cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit great morphological richness of static metastable states. Understanding the transitions between such states is key for the development of switchable devices. We show, using a quasi-one-dimensional model,…
We develop a molecular model of non-uniform deformations within the framework of liquid crystal rubber elasticity. We show that, similarly to the uniform case, the theory is not sensitive to the molecular details of polymer liquid crystal…
Models of smectic-C liquid crystal elastomers predict that it can display soft elasticity, in which the shape of the elastomer changes at no energy cost. The amplitude of the soft mode and the accompanying shears are dependent on the…
The behavior of a thin film of nematic liquid crystal with unequal Frank constants is discussed. Distinct Frank constants are found to imply unequal core energies for $+1/2$ and $-1/2$ disclinations. Even so, a topological constraint is…
A two-dimensional atomic mass spring system is investigated for critical fracture loads and its crack path geometry. We rigorously prove that, in the discrete-to-continuum limit, the minimal energy of a crystal under uniaxial tension leads…
The Peach-Koehler force between disclination lines was originally formulated in the study of crystalline solids, and has since been adopted to provide a notion of interactions between disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals. Here, we…
We study the coarsening dynamics of two and three dimensional biaxial nematic liquid crystals, using Langevin dynamics. Unlike previous work, we use a model with no a priori relationship among the three elastic constants associated with…
Recent numerical simulations of hard helical particle systems unveiled the existence of a novel chiral nematic phase, termed screw-like, characterised by the helical organization of the particle C$_2$ symmetry axes round the nematic…
In this paper, we examine the dynamic behavior of a viscoelastic string oscillating above a rigid obstacle in a one-dimensional setting, accounting for inelastic contact between the string and the obstacle. We construct a global-in-time…
The application of a sufficiently strong strain perpendicular to the pitch axis of a monodomain cholesteric elastomer unwinds the cholesteric helix. Previous theoretical analyses of this transition ignored the effects of Frank elasticity…