Related papers: 'Setting things straight' by twisting and bending?
We present magneto-optic measurements on two materials that form the recently discovered twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase. This intriguing state of matter represents a new fluid phase that is orientationally anisotropic in three directions…
Conformations of a single semiflexible polymer chain dissolved in a low molecular weight liquid crystalline solvents (nematogens) are examined by using a mean field theory. We takes into account a stiffness and partial orientational…
In the hexagonal columnar phase of chiral polymers a bias towards cholesteric twist competes with braiding along an average direction. When the chirality is strong, topological defects proliferate, leading to either a tilt grain boundary…
Dimeric compounds forming twist-bend nematic, Ntb, phase show unusual optical texture related to the formation of arrays of focal conic defects. Some of the focal conics show submicron internal structure with 8 nm periodicity, which is very…
Topological defects play a pivotal role in the physics of liquid crystals and represent one of the most prominent and well studied aspects of mesophases. While in two-dimensional nematics, disclinations are traditionally treated as…
Inspired by the observations of a remarkably stable biaxial nematic phase [E.v.d. Pol et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 258301 (2009)], we investigate the effect of size polydispersity on the phase behavior of a suspension of boardlike…
We study a minimal model of a system with coexisting nematic and polar orientational orders, where one field tends to order and the other prefers isotropy. For strong coupling, the ordered field aligns the isotropic one, locking their…
Using molecular simulations and classical density functional theory, we study the liquid-crystalline phase behaviour of a series of bent rod-like mesogens with a controlled degree of chirality introduced through a twist at the centre of the…
A material showing a sequence of three ferroelectric liquid crystalline phases below the paraelectric nematic phase has been synthesized and studied. The polar order of molecules appearing due to the dipole-dipole interactions in the NF…
We prove the existence of a finite temperature Z_{2} phase transition for the topological charge ordering within the Fully Frustrated XY Model. Our method enables a proof of the topological charge confinement within the conventional XY…
The origin of nematicity, i.e., in-plane rotational symmetry breaking, and in particular the relative role played by spontaneous unidirectional ordering of spin, orbital, or charge degrees of freedom, is a challenging issue of magnetism,…
Helical structures are exciting and are utilized in numerous applications ranging from biotechnology to displays to medicine. Accurate description and understanding of resonance effects in helical structures provides crucial knowledge on…
Polymorphism, the phenomenon that a species can exist in many discrete forms, is common in nature, such as hair colors in an animal species, flower colors in a tree species, and blood types in humans, etc. In materials science, it refers to…
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
The microscopic origin of the nematicity, namely, four-fold rotational symmetry breaking in iron-based superconductors has been controversial since its discovery. In particular, its relationship with the stripe-type spin-density-wave order…
We report a dynamic light scattering study of the fluctuation modes in a thermotropic liquid crystalline mixture of monomer and dimer compounds that exhibits the twist-bend nematic ($\mathrm{N_{TB}}$) phase. The results reveal a spectrum of…
A state of matter in which molecules show a long-range orientational order and no positional order is called a nematic liquid crystal. The best known and most widely used (for example, in modern displays) is the uniaxial nematic, with the…
Weyl nodal loop semimetals are gapless topological phases that, unlike their insulator counterparts, may be unstable to small perturbations that respect their topology-protecting symmetries. Here, we analyze a clean system perturbed by…
Out-of-plane polar domain structures have recently been discovered in strained and twisted bilayers of inversion symmetry broken systems such as hexagonal boron nitride. Here we show that this symmetry breaking also gives rise to an…
Several attractive properties of hydrocarbon-linked mesogenic dimers have been discovered, a major feature of these has been the ability of dimers under confinement to form periodic patterns. At least six different types of stripe-like…