Related papers: Coupling topological defect phase to extrinsic cur…
The effects of an electric field on the flow patterns and defect dynamics of two-dimensional active nematics are numerically investigated. We found that field-induced director reorientation causes anisotropic active turbulence characterized…
We study how confinement transforms the chaotic dynamics of bulk microtubule-based active nematics into regular spatiotemporal patterns. For weak confinements, multiple continuously nucleating and annihilating topological defects…
The growing interest in active nematics and the emerging evidence of the relevance of topological defects in biology asks for reliable data analysis tools to identify, classify and track such defects in simulation and microscopy data. We…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
Turing patterns emerge from a spatially uniform state following a linear instability driven by diffusion. Features of the eventual pattern (stabilized by non-linearities) are already present in the initial unstable modes. On a uniform flat…
Using scaled-particle theory for binary mixtures of two-dimensional hard particles with rotational freedom, we analyse the stability of nematic phases and the demixing phase behaviour of a variety of mixtures, focussing on cases where at…
We describe the geometry of bend distortions in twist-bend nematic liquid crystals in terms of their fundamental degeneracies, which we call $\beta$ lines. These represent a new class of line-like topological defect. We use them to…
Conformal defects -- extended objects in conformal field theories -- carry localised excitations inherited from symmetry currents, known as the displacements and tilts. They capture the linear response of the defect to deformations of its…
Stabilizing defects in liquid-crystal systems is crucial for many physical processes and applications ranging from functionalizing liquid-crystal textures to recently reported command of chaotic behaviors of active matters. In this work, we…
Recent numerical simulations of lid-driven cavity flow of a nematic liquid crystal have found dynamical behavior where topological defects rotate about the center of the fluid vortex induced by the lid motion. By considering a simpler…
The nematic-superconductor state is an example of a quantum liquid crystal that breaks gauge as well as rotation invariance. It was conjectured to exist in the pseudogap regime of the cuprates high $T_c$ superconductors. The…
Smectic liquid crystals are charcterized by layers that have a preferred uniform spacing and vanishing curvature in their ground state. Dislocations in the smectics play an important role in phase nucleation, layer reorientation, and…
Twisted assemblies of filaments in ropes, cables and bundles are essential structural elements in wide use in macroscopic materials as well as within the cells and tissues of living organisms. We develop the unique, non-linear elastic…
Monte Carlo molecular simulations of curve-shaped rods show the propensity of such shapes to polymorphism revealing both smectic and polar nematic phases. The nematic exhibits a nanoscale modulated local structure characterized by a unique,…
Excitons, bound states of electrons and holes, are affected by the properties of the underlying band structure of a material. Defects in lattice systems may trap electronic defect states, to which an electron can be excited to form…
Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…
Topological phases with insulating bulk and gapless surface or edge modes have attracted much attention because of their fundamental physics implications and potential applications in dissipationless electronics and spintronics. In this…
Cell layers are often categorized as contractile or extensile active nematics but recent experiments on neural progenitor cells with induced $+1$ topological defects challenge this classification. In a bottom-up approach, we first study a…
We present an study of the dynamics and decay pattern of phase singularities due to the action of a system with a discrete rotational symmetry of finite order. A topological charge conservation rule is identified. The role played by the…