Related papers: 'Setting things straight' by twisting and bending?
A twisted ring is a ring endowed with a family of endomorphisms satisfying certain relations. One may then consider the notions of twisted module and twisted differential module. We study them and show that, under some general hypothesis,…
We investigate the origin of secondary disclinations that were recently described as a new evidence of a biaxial nematic phase in an oxadiazole bent-core thermotropic liquid crystal C7. With an assortment of optical techniques such as…
A simple model is proposed for nematogenic molecules that favor perpendicular orientations as well as parallel ones. (Charged rods, for example, show this antagonistic tendency.) When a small disorienting field is applied along $z$, a low…
A nematic membrane is a sheet with embedded orientational order, which can occur in biological cells, liquid crystal films, manufactured materials, and other soft matter systems. By formulating the free energy of nematic films using tensor…
The recently discovered twist-bend nematic phase, $\rm N_{tb}$, is a non-uniform equilibrium nematic phase that presents a spontaneous bend with a precession of the nematic director, $\textbf{n}$, on a conical helix with a tilt angle…
The theory of phase ordering dynamics -- the growth of order through domain coarsening when a system is quenched from the homogeneous phase into a broken-symmetry phase -- is reviewed, with the emphasis on recent developments. Interest will…
Self-organizing nanocheckerboards have been experimentally fabricated in Mn-based spinels, but have not yet been explained with first principles. Using density-functional-theory, we explain the phase diagram of the…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
From general arguments, that are valid for spin models with sufficiently short-range interactions, we derive strong constraints on the excitation spectrum across a continuous phase transition at zero temperature between a magnetic and a…
In an earlier work (R. Bhandari, Phys. Lett. A 204 (1995) 188), it was shown that, contrary to the property of achromaticity (independence of wavelength) usually associated with topological phases, topological phases encountered in…
The twist-bend nematic phase (NTB) is characterized by a conically twisting director and by a dramatic softening of the bend elastic constant before the transition to NTB phase. In the recently found splay nematic phase (NS) the splay…
Twisted bilayers of nodal superconductors were recently proposed as a promising platform to host superconducting phases that spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry. Here we extend this analysis to twisted multilayers, focusing on two…
We investigate the effects of extrinsic curvature on the turbulent behavior of a 2D active nematic confined to the surface of a cylinder. The surface of a cylinder has no intrinsic curvatrue and only extrinsic curvature. A nematic field…
The purpose of this expository paper is to present new directions in the classical Nielsen-Reidemeister fixed point theory. We describe twisted Burnside-Frobenius theorem, groups with $R_\infty$ \emph{property} and a connection between…
Binary mixtures of semiflexible polymers with the same chain length but different persistence lengths separate into two coexisting different nematic phases when the osmotic pressure of the lyotropic solution is varied. Molecular Dynamics…
The conventional topological description given by the fundamental group of nematic order parameter does not adequately explain the entangled defect line structures that have been observed in nematic colloids. We introduce a new topological…
I briefly review: (a) some recent developments in the theory of hard scattering in QCD with polarized beams, and (b) coherent hard diffraction (that is, hard scattering in diffractive events, with the Pomeron behaving in an apparently…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking underlies much of our classification of phases of matter and their associated transitions. The nature of the underlying symmetry being broken determines many of the qualitative properties of the phase; this is…
We classify the gapped phases of Z_N parafermions in one dimension and construct a representative of each phase. Even in the absence of additional symmetries besides parafermionic parity, parafermions may be realized in a variety of phases,…
We consider a mechanism of dark matter production in the course of first order phase transition. We assume that there is an asymmetry between X- and anti-X-particles of dark sector. In particular, it may be related to the baryon asymmetry.…