Related papers: Shape Bistability in Squeezed Chromonic Droplets
We explore the behavior of two-dimensional patchy colloidal particles with 8 or 10 symmetrically arranged patches by employing Monte-Carlo simulations. The particles interact according to an isotropic pair potential that possesses only one…
Living polymers composed of non-covalently bonded building blocks with weak backbone flexibility may self-assemble into thermoresponsive lyotropic liquid crystals. We demonstrate that the reversible polymer assembly and phase behavior can…
We investigate the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensate droplets composed of $^{164}$Dy atoms formed in a double-well potential following removal of the interwell barrier. By solving the dipolar Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we determine phase…
Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
Morphogenesis of living systems involves topological shape transformations which are highly unusual in the inanimate world. Here we demonstrate that a droplet of a nematic liquid crystal changes its equilibrium shape from a simply-connected…
We present a theory that explains the experimentally observed crystallisation of a dilute dysprosium condensate into a lattice of droplets. The key ingredient of our theory is a conservative three-body interaction which stabilises the…
A new scheme for producing semidiscrete self-trapped vortices (\textquotedblleft swirling photon droplets\textquotedblright ) in photonic crystals with competing quadratic ($\chi ^{(2)}$) and self-defocusing cubic ($\chi ^{(3)}$)…
Although glassy relaxation is typically associated with disorder, here we report on a new type of glassy dynamics relating to dislocations within 2-D crystals of colloidal dimers. Previous studies have demonstrated that dislocation motion…
We propose a simple theoretical model which explains a formation of dipolar 2D and 3D colloidal structures in nematic liquid crystal. Colloidal particles are treated as effective hard spheres interacting via their elastic dipole, quadrupole…
The axisymmetric deformation and motion of interacting droplets in an imposed temperature gradient is considered using boundary-integral techniques for slow viscous motion. Results showing temporal drop motion, deformations and separation…
We report curling self-propulsion in aqueous emulsions of common mesogenic compounds. Nematic liquid crystal droplets self-propel in a surfactant solution with concentrations above the critical micelle concentration while undergoing…
Anisotropic fluids, such as nematic liquid crystals, can form non-spherical equilibrium shapes known as tactoids. Predicting the shape of these structures as a function of material parameters is challenging and paradigmatic of a broader…
We explore a novel strategy of patterning nematic elastomers that does not require inscribing the texture directly. It is based on varying the dopant concentration that, beside shifting the phase transition point, affects the nematic…
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymer to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behavior and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the polymers. We report a…
Large deformations of soft elastic beads spinning at high angular velocity in a denser background fluid are investigated theoretically, numerically, and experimentally using millimeter-size polyacrylamide hydrogel particles introduced in a…
Recent experimental discoveries of novel nematic types with polar order, including ferroelectric nematic and splay nematic have brought the resurgence of the interest in polar and modulated phases. One of the most important factors that is…
We show that spontaneous density segregation in dense systems of aligning circle swimmers is a condensation phenomenon at odds with the phase separation scenarios usually observed in two-dimensional active matter. The condensates, which…
Recently it was suggested that transient excitonic instability can be realized in optically-pumped two-dimensional (2D) Dirac materials (DMs), such as graphene and topological insulator surface states. Here we discuss the possibility of…
Liquid crystals are phases of matter intermediate between crystals and liquids. Whereas classical liquid crystals have been known for a long time and are used in electro-optical displays, much less is known about their quantum counterparts.…
We present a self-contained review of the theory of dislocation-mediated quantum melting at zero temperature in two spatial dimensions. The theory describes the liquid-crystalline phases with spatial symmetries in between a quantum…