Related papers: Paradoxes for Chromonic Liquid Crystal Droplets
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a fundamental concept in many areas of physics, ranging from cosmology and particle physics to condensed matter. A prime example is the breaking of spatial translation symmetry, which underlies the formation…
We investigate the connection between the transport properties and the thermodynamics of electronic systems with a tendency to form broken-symmetry mesophases evocative of the physics of liquid crystals. Through a hydrodynamic approach to…
Elastic crystalline membranes exhibit a buckling transition from sphere to polyhedron. However, their morphologies are restricted to convex polyhedra and are difficult to externally control. Here, we study morphological changes of closed…
Discrete time crystals are novel phases of matter that break the discrete time translational symmetry of a periodically driven system. In this work, we propose a classical system of weakly-nonlinear parametrically-driven coupled oscillators…
The low temperature acoustic and thermal properties of amorphous, glassy materials are remarkably similar. All these properties are described theoretically with reasonable quantitative accuracy by assuming that the amorphous solid contains…
Ideal crystalline membranes, realized by graphene and other atomic monolayers, exhibit rich physics - a universal anomalous elasticity of the critical "flat" phase characterized by a negative Poisson ratio, universally singular elastic…
We present here a numerical study of a lattice model of a chiral liquid. The low symmetry of the favoured local structure depresses the freezing point to reveal an exotic liquid-liquid transition characterised by the appearance of an…
It is commonly believed that the transition line separating a liquid and a solid cannot be interrupted by a critical point. This opinion is based on the traditional symmetry argument that an isotropic liquid cannot be continuously…
Theoretical and experimental studies have revealed that electrons in condensed matter can behave hydrodynamically, exhibiting fluid phenomena such as Stokes flow and vortices. Unlike classical fluids, preferred directions inside crystals…
A nematic liquid crystal confined to the surface of a sphere exhibits topological defects of total charge $+2$ due to the topological constraint. In equilibrium, the nematic field forms four $+1/2$ defects, located at the corners of a…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions do not support long-ranged nematic order, but a quasi-nematic phase where the orientational correlations decay algebraically is possible. The transition from the isotropic to the quasi-nematic phase can be…
Computer simulations are presented of the isotropic-to-nematic transition in a liquid crystal confined between two parallel plates a distance H apart. The plates are neutral and do not impose any anchoring on the particles. Depending on the…
Crystal defects can highlight interesting quantum features by coupling to the low-energy Hamiltonian $H$. Here we show that independently of this $H$ coupling, topological crystalline defects can generate new features by directly modifying…
The dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional isotropic droplet in a cholesteric liquid crystal medium under symmetric shear flow is studied by lattice Boltzmann simulations. We consider a geometry in which the flow direction is along the axis of…
Malleability of metals is an example of how dynamics of defects like dislocations induced by external stresses alters material properties and enables technological applications. However, these defects move merely to comply with the…
Flagellated microswimmers B. Subtilis dispersed in a nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal form a living liquid crystal (LLC). The combination of the passive and active components allows us to analyze how the active…
The motion of topological defects is an important feature of the dynamics of all liquid crystals, and is especially conspicuous in active liquid crystals. Understanding defect motion is a challenging theoretical problem, because the…
Patterns are quotidian in nature. Distinct multiscale patterns are generally a consequence of nonequilibrium dynamical processes associated with mechanical or hydrodynamic instabilities. In this thesis, I report experimental investigations…
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
Cholesteric liquid crystals experience geometric frustration when they are confined between surfaces with anchoring conditions that are incompatible with the cholesteric twist. Because of this frustration, they develop complex topological…