Related papers: Nematic Tactoid Population
Drops of active liquid crystal have recently shown the ability to self-propel, which was associated with topological defects in the orientation of active filaments [Sanchez {\em et al.}, Nature {\bf 491}, 431 (2013)]. Here, we study the…
We numerically investigate the rheological response of a non-coalescing multiple emulsion under a symmetric shear flow. We find that the dynamics significantly depends on the magnitude of the shear rate and on the number of the encapsulated…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
We study experimentally the nonequilibrium phase behaviour of a horizontal monolayer of macroscopic rods. The motion of the rods in two dimensions is driven by vibrations in the vertical direction. Aside from the control variables of…
Emerging technologies based on liquid crystal (LC) materials increasingly leverage the presence of nanoscale defects, unlike the canonical application of LCs -- LC displays. The inherent nanoscale characteristics of LC defects present both…
Chromonic liquid crystals constitute a novel lyotropic phase, whose elastic properties have so far been modeled within the classical Oseen-Frank theory, provided that the twist constant is assumed to be considerably smaller than the…
In soft matter, the phase of nematic liquid crystals can be made from anisotropic molecules in single component materials, or as a suspension of mesoscopic nematogens. The later offers more versatility in the experimental design of complex…
A model describing the evolution of a liquid crystal substance in the nematic phase is investigated in terms of three basic state variables: the {\it absolute temperature} $\teta$, the {\it velocity field} $\ub$, and the {\it director…
The translation and shape deformations of a passive viscous Newtonian droplet immersed in an active nematic liquid crystal under circular confinement are analyzed using a linear stability analysis. We focus on the case of a sharply aligned…
Active drops refer to drops with the ability to self-migrate: these drops typically attain this ability by virtue of containing of active particles that derive energy from their environment and undergo directed motion inside the drops,…
The spreading of a cap-shaped spherical droplet of non-Newtonian power-law liquids, both shear-thinning and shear-thinning liquids, that completely wet a spherical substrate is theoretically investigated in the capillary-controlled…
This paper is the second in a pair treating a new lattice model for nematic media. In addition to the familiar isotropic (I) and nematically ordered (N) phases, the phase diagram established in the previous paper (Paper I) contains a new,…
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…
A nematic liquid-crystal gel is a macroscopically homogeneous elastic medium with the rotational symmetry of a nematic liquid crystal. In this paper, we develop a general approach to the study of these gels that incorporates all underlying…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
Topological defects, which are singular points in a director field, play a major role in shaping active systems. Here, we experimentally study topological defects and the flow patterns around them, that are formed during the highly rapid…
We give the global homotopy classification of nematic textures for a general domain with weak anchoring boundary conditions and arbitrary defect set in terms of twisted cohomology, and give an explicit computation for the case of knotted…
Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…
We show that back-flow, the coupling between the order parameter and the velocity fields, has a significant effect on the motion of defects in nematic liquid crystals. In particular the defect speed can depend strongly on the topological…
The motion of topological defects is an important feature of the dynamics of all liquid crystals, and is especially conspicuous in active liquid crystals. Understanding defect motion is a challenging theoretical problem, because the…