Related papers: Structural Landscapes in Geometrically Frustrated …
Phenomenological model of chiral polar smectics is introduced with interactions up to the fourth neighboring layers. The minimization of the free energy gives three stable structures: the ferroelectric Sm C$^*$ phase, the antiferroelectric…
Surface-induced profiles of both nematic and smectic order parameters in a nematic liquid crystal, ranging from an orienting substrate to "infinity", were evaluated numerically on base of an extended Landau theory. In order to obtain a…
A model is derived for the viscoelastic response of glasses at isothermal uniaxial deformation with small strains. A glass is treated as an ensemble of relaxing units with various activation energies for rearrangement. With reference to the…
Smectic blue phases (BPSm) are new mesophases of thermotropic liquid crystals, which exhibit a double geometrical frustration: the extension of chirality in three spatial dimensions like the classical blue phases, and helical twist…
Many soft and biological materials display so-called 'soft glassy' dynamics; their constituents undergo anomalous random motions and complex cooperative rearrangements. A recent simulation model of one soft glassy material, a coarsening…
The row model for frustrated XY spins on a triangular lattice in 2D is used to study incommensurate{IC}) spiral and commensurate{C} antiferromagnetic (AF) phases, in the regime where a C-IC transition occurs. Using fluctuating boundary…
We study the global influence of curvature on the free energy landscape of two-dimensional binary mixtures confined on closed surfaces. Starting from a generic effective free energy, constructed on the basis of symmetry considerations and…
We numerically study the potential energy landscape of a fragile glassy system and find that the dynamic crossover corresponding to the glass transition is actually the effect of an underlying geometric transition caused by a qualitative…
Site-occupancy disorder, defined as the non-periodic occupation of lattice sites in a crystal structure, is a ubiquitous phenomenon in solid-state physics and chemistry. Examples are mineral solid solutions, synthetic non-stoichiometric…
We present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
The paper is concerned with various issues surrounding the mathematical description of defects in models of liquid crystals, drawing on experience from solid mechanics. The roles played by a suitable choice of function space and by the…
We numerically simulate a thermalization process in an energy landscape with hierarchically organized metastable states. The initial configuration is chosen to have a large energy excess, relative to the thermal equilibrium value at the…
We investigate the phase behaviour of a two-dimensional colloidal model system of ultra-soft particles on a substrate which varies periodically along one spatial direction. Our calculations are based on mean-field density functional theory…
Grain boundaries in extremely confined colloidal smectics possess a topological fine structure with coexisting nematic and tetratic symmetry of the director field. An alternative way to approach the problem of smectic topology is via the…
We have studied the structure and free energy landscape of a semi-flexible lattice-polymer in the presence of a surface. At low temperatures coexistence of two-dimensional integer-folded crystals is observed. As the temperature is increased…
We consider a Landau-de Gennes model for a connected cubic lattice scaffold in a nematic host, in a dilute regime. We analyse the homogenised limit for both cases in which the lattice of embedded particles presents or not cubic symmetry and…
We formally extend the energy landscape approach for the thermodynamics of liquids to account for saddle points. By considering the extensive nature of macroscopic potential energies, we derive the scaling behavior of saddles with system…
Geometric frustration arises when lattice structure prevents simultaneous minimization of local interactions. It leads to highly degenerate ground states and, subsequently, complex phases of matter such as water ice, spin ice and frustrated…
We have written expressions for the free energy of a cholesteric liquid crystal in an approximation using the elasticity constants K_1, K_2, K_3 and the energy variation and the corresponding energy and energy gradient along the direction…
On the basis of the density functional theory, we give a clear definition of the free energy landscape. To show the usefulness of the definition, we construct the free energy landscape for rearrangement of atoms in an FCC crystal of hard…