Related papers: Isotropic-Nematic Phase Transition and Liquid Crys…
Droplet breakup is important in many natural and industrial processes, but the current classification of breakup regimes, especially the intermediate breakup regime, is ambiguous. In this study, the transitions of breakup regimes for…
We study the asymptotic behavior of the minimisers of the Landau-de Gennes model for nematic liquid crystals in a two-dimensional domain in the regime of small elastic constant. At leading order in the elasticity constant, the…
Spontaneous onset of a low temperature topologically ordered phase in a 2-dimensional (2D) lattice model of uniaxial liquid crystal (LC) was debated extensively pointing to a suspected underlying mechanism affecting the RG flow near the…
Capillary microflows of liquid crystal phases are central to material, biological and bio-inspired systems. Despite their fundamental and applied significance, a detailed understanding of the stationary behaviour of nematic liquid crystals…
A thin water film evaporating from a cleaved mica substrate undergoes a first-order phase transition between two values of film thickness. During evaporation, the interface between the two phases develops a fingering instability similar to…
We examine the equilibrium configurations of a nematic liquid crystal with an immersed body in two-dimensions. A complex variables formulation provides a means for finding analytical solutions in the case of strong anchoring. Local…
For hard ellipsoids of revolution we calculate the phase diagram for the idealized glass transition. Our equations cover the glass physics in the full phase space, for all packing fractions and all aspect ratios X$_0$. With increasing…
We introduce a simple mean-field lattice model to describe the behavior of nematic elastomers. This model combines the Maier-Saupe-Zwanzig approach to liquid crystals and an extension to lattice systems of the Warner-Terentjev theory of…
We show, using molecular dynamics simulations, that a two-dimensional Lennard-Jones solid is subject to droplet fluctuations characterized by {\em non-affine} deviations from local crystallinity. The fraction of particles in these droplets…
Liquid crystalline phases of matter permeate nature and technology, with examples ranging from cell membranes to liquid-crystal displays. Remarkably, electronic liquid crystal phases can exist in two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) at…
Tackling the low-temperature fate of supercooled liquids is challenging due to the immense timescales involved, which prevent equilibration and lead to the operational glass transition. Relating glassy behaviour to an underlying,…
Droplets abound in nature and technology. In general, they are multicomponent, and, when out of equilibrium, with gradients in concentration, implying flow and mass transport. Moreover, phase transitions can occur, with either evaporation,…
Motivated by the variety of applications in which nematic Hele-Shaw flow occurs, a theoretical model for Hele-Shaw flow of a nematic liquid crystal is formulated and analysed. We derive the thin-film Ericksen-Leslie equations that govern…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
In this work we numerically study the switching dynamics of a 2D cholesteric emulsion droplet immersed in an isotropic fluid under an electric field, which is either uniform or rotating with constant speed. The overall dynamics depend…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal, in coexistence with its isotropic phase, in contact with a substrate patterned with rectangular grooves. In such a system, the nematic phase may fill the grooves without the occurrence of complete…
This article investigates the interaction of nematic liquid crystals modeled by a simplified Ericksen-Leslie model with a rigid body. It is shown that this problem is locally strongly well-posed, and that it also admits a unique, global…
Substrates which are chemically or topographically patterned induce a variety of liquid crystal textures. The response of the liquid crystal to competing surface orientations, typical of patterned substrates, is determined by the anisotropy…
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…
Liquid crystals (LCs) composed of mesogens play important roles in various scientific and engineering problems. How a system with many mesogens can enter a LC state is an interesting and important problem. Using stiff and free-joint…