Related papers: Motile dislocations knead odd crystals into whorls
When a swollen, thermoresponsive polymer gel is heated in a solvent bath, it expels solvent and deswells. When this heating is slow, deswelling proceeds homogeneously, as observed in a toroid-shaped gel that changes volume whilst…
Via mechanisms not accessible at equilibrium, self-propelled particles can form phases with positional order, such as crystals, and with orientational order, such as polar flocks. However, the interplay between these two types of order…
Many biological systems, such as bacterial suspensions and actomyosin networks, form polar liquid crystals. These systems are `active' or far-from-equilibrium, due to local forcing of the solvent by the constituent particles. In many cases…
The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
The sliding motion of objects is typically governed by their friction with the underlying surface. Compared to translational friction, however, rotational friction has received much less attention. Here, we experimentally and theoretically…
Stress-strain constitutive relations in solids with an internal angular degree of freedom can be modelled using Cosserat (also called micropolar) elasticity. In this paper, we explore the phenomenology for a natural extension of Cosserat…
Light-activated self-propelled colloids are synthesized and their active motion is studied using optical microscopy. We propose a versatile route using different photoactive materials, and demonstrate a multiwavelength activation and…
We study the disorder-to-order transition in a collection of polar self-propelled particles interacting through a distance dependent alignment interaction. Strength of the interaction, $a^{d}$ ($0<a<1$) decays with metric distance $d$…
The free energy of antiferroelectric liquid crystal which takes into account polar order explicitly is presented. Steric, van der Waals, piezoelectric and flexoelectric interactions to the nearest layers and dipolar electrostatic…
In magnetic insulators, the sense of rotation of the magnetization is associated with novel phases of matter and exotic transport phenomena. Aimed to find new sources of chiral magnetism rooted in intrinsic fields and geometry, twisted…
We study colloidal ordering and disordering on two-dimensional periodic substrates where the number of colloids per substrate minima is two or three. The colloids form dimer or trimer states with orientational ordering, referred to as…
Dislocation nucleation in homogeneous crystals initially unfolds as a linear symmetry-breaking elastic instability. In the absence of explicit nucleation centers, such instability develops simultaneously all over the crystal and due to the…
Recent studies of the phase diagram for spherical, purely repulsive, active particles established the existence of a transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like phase analogous to the one observed in colloidal systems at thermal…
We study the deformation of a fluctuating crystalline sheet confined between two flat rigid walls as a simple model for layered solids where bonds among atoms {\it within} the same layer are much stronger than those {\it between} layers.…
We analyze the behavior of a suspension of active polar particles under shear. In the absence of external forces, orientationally ordered active particles are known to exhibit a transition to a state of non-uniform polarization and…
The transport of slightly deformable chiral objects in a uniform shear flow is investigated. Depending on the equilibrium configuration one finds up to four different asymptotic states that can be distinguished by a lateral drift velocity…
The forces exerted by growing crystals on the surrounding materials play a major role in many geological processes, from diagenetic replacement to rock weathering and uplifting of rocks and soils. Although crystallization is a…
For particles confined to two dimensions, any curvature of the surface affects the structural, kinetic and thermodynamic properties of the system. If the curvature is non-uniform, an even richer range of behaviours can emerge. Using a…
The fact that a disordered material is not constrained in its properties in the same way as a crystal presents significant and yet largely untapped potential for novel material design. However, unlike their crystalline counterparts,…