Related papers: Active cholesterics: odder than odd elasticity
We introduce a model to describe columnar phases of chiral discotic liquid phases in which the normals to disc-like molecules are constrained to lie parallel to columnar axes. The model includes separate chiral interactions favoring,…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
Micropolar active matter requires for its kinematic description both positional and orientational degrees of freedom. Activity generates dynamic coupling between these kinematic variables that are absent in micropolar passive matter, such…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
Recent experiments on monolayers of spindle-like cells plated on adhesive stripe-shaped domains have provided a convincing demonstration that certain types of collective phenomena in epithelia are well described by active nematic…
Polarization flutter, produced by an applied AC electric field drives an equilibrium ferroelectric nematic ($\mathrm{N_F}$) liquid crystal (LC) through a transition into a dissipative active ferroelectric nematic state exhibiting strong…
A first-principles approach for active chiral hard disks is presented, that explicitly accounts for steric interactions on the two-body level. We derive an effective one-body equation for the joint probability distribution of ositions and…
We numerically study the dynamics of two-dimensional blue phases in active chiral liquid crystals. We show that introducing contractile activity results in stabilised blue phases, while small extensile activity generates ordered but dynamic…
A statistical theory of cholesteric liquid crystals composed of short rigid biaxial molecules is presented. It is derived in the thermodynamic limit at a small density and a small twist. The uniaxial (biaxial) cholesteric phase is regarded…
We study the phase behaviour of a quasi-two dimensional cholesteric liquid crystal shell. We characterise the topological phases arising close to the isotropic-cholesteric transition, and show that they differ in a fundamental way from…
We study an inertial chiral active fluid, formed by repulsive particles that transfer angular momentum through odd interactions, i.e. transverse forces. Chirality induces an inhomogeneous phase, consisting of rotating bubbles, whose…
Many solid materials and liquid crystals exhibit geometric frustration, meaning that they have an ideal local structure that cannot fill up space. For that reason, the global phase must be a compromise between the ideal local structure and…
A two-dimensional system of soft particles interacting via a two-length-scale potential is studied. Density functional theory and Brownian dynamics simulations reveal a fluid phase and two crystalline phases with different lattice spacing.…
Chiral liquid crystals exhibit in-plane spontaneous polarizations, however in their smectic phase the primary order parameter is a tilt vector associated with molecular rotations around the long molecular axis parallel to the director. The…
We give a topological classification of defect lines in cholesteric liquid crystals using methods from contact topology. By focusing on the role played by the chirality of the material, we demonstrate a fundamental distinction between…
Fluids composed of chiral active components can exhibit odd viscosity, a property that breaks time-reversal and parity symmetries. We investigate the hydrodynamic response to monopole and dipole singularities in a compressible thin fluid…
Motivated by the experimentally observed shear-induced destabilization and reorientation of smectic A like systems, we consider an extended formulation of smectic A hydrodynamics. We include both, the smectic layering (via the layer…
Dipoles in triangular optical ladders constitute a flexible platform for the study of the interplay between geometric frustration and long-range anisotropic interactions, and in particular for the observation of the spontaneous onset of…
We theoretically and computationally study the low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics of a linear active microswimmer surfing on a compressible thin fluid layer characterized by an odd viscosity. Since the underlying three-dimensional fluid is…
Liquids in systems with spherically symmetric interactions are not thermodynamically stable when the range of the attraction is reduced sufficiently. However, these metastable liquids have lifetimes long enough that they are readily…