Related papers: Paradoxes for Chromonic Liquid Crystal Droplets
The breaking of chiral and time-reversal symmetries provides a pathway to exotic quantum phenomena and topological phases. In particular, the breaking of chiral (mirror) symmetry in quantum materials has been shown to have important…
The emergence of new techniques for the fabrication of nematic droplets with nontrivial topology provides new routes for the assembly of responsive devices. Here we perform a numerical study of spherical nematic droplets on fibres. We…
In liquid-crystalline elastomers, the nematic order parameter and the induced strain vary smoothly across the isotropic-nematic transition, without the expected first-order discontinuity. To investigate this smooth variation, we measure the…
The isotropic to ferroelectric nematic liquid transition had been theoretically studied over one hundred years ago, but its experimental studies are rare. Here we present polarizing optical microscopy studies and theoretical considerations…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…
We examine the equilibrium configurations of a nematic liquid crystal with an immersed body in two-dimensions. A complex variables formulation provides a means for finding analytical solutions in the case of strong anchoring. Local…
Two dimensional crystalline membranes in isotropic embedding space exhibit a flat phase with anomalous elasticity, relevant e.g., for graphene. Here we study their thermal fluctuations in the absence of exact rotational invariance in the…
The possibility for the occurrence in crystals of a phenomenon, resembling turbulence, is discussed. This phenomenon, called {\it heterophase turbulence}, is manifested by the fluctuational appearance inside a crystalline sample of…
There is a recent interest in studying odd elasticity in soft solids. Current focus has been on simple solids. However, many soft solids are structured and can exhibit nematic elasticity or viscoelasticity. Here we generalize the concept of…
Electro-hydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of…
When chiral liquid crystals or magnets are subjected to applied fields or other anisotropic environments, the competition between favored twist and anisotropy leads to the formation of complex defect structures. In some cases, the defects…
How much current does a sliding electron crystal carry? The answer to this simple question has important implications for the dynamic properties of the crystal, such as the frequency of its cyclotron motion, and its phonon spectrum. In this…
Exploring continuous time crystals (CTCs) within the symmetric subspace of spin systems has been a subject of intensive research in recent times. Thus far, the stability of the time-crystal phase outside the symmetric subspace in such spin…
The phase behavior of ionic fluids on simple cubic and tetragonal (anisotropic) lattices has been studied by grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. Systems with both the true lattice Coulombic potential and continuous-space $1/r$…
We report the observation of a doubly-periodic surface defect-pattern in the liquid crystal 8CB, formed during the nematic--smectic A phase transition. The pattern results from the antagonistic alignment of the 8CB molecules, which is…
The behavior of a microdrop of dielectric liquid suspended in a magnetic fluid and exposed to the action of electric and magnetic fields is studied experimentally. With increasing electric field, the deformation of droplets into oblate…
Expressions are obtained for force and couple densities and stress tensors in macroscopic models for nematic liquid crystals subjected to electric fields. The coupling between the liquid crystal orientational properties and the electric…
Systems of elongated molecules, doped with small amounts of molecules lacking mirror symmetry can form macroscopically twisted cholesteric liquid crystal phases. The aim of this work is to rigorously derive the Oseen-Frank model of…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers have interesting and potentially very useful photonic properties. In an ideal monodomain configuration of these materials, one finds a Bragg-reflection of light in a narrow wavelength range and a…
We discuss recent developments and present new findings in the colloidal description of soft polymeric macromolecular aggregates. For various macromolecular architectures, such as linear chains, star polymers, dendrimers and polyelectrolyte…