Related papers: Topological Phases and Curvature-Driven Pattern Fo…
Topological surface states, a new kind of electronic state of matter, have recently been observed on the cleaved surfaces of crystals of a handful of small band gap semiconductors. The underlying chemical factors that enable these states…
We experimentally investigate the nature of 2D phase transitions in a quasi-2D granular fluid. Using a surface decorated with periodically spaced dimples we observe interfacial tension between coexisting liquid and crystal phases.…
Predicting the macroscopic chiral behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystals from the microscopic chirality of the particles is highly non-trivial, even when the chiral interactions are purely entropic in nature. Here we introduce a novel…
Chirality plays a crucial role in determining the structure of many systems in nature. Twisted or helical aggregates as a consequence of self-assembly can be seen in many biological and synthetic materials. Despite extensive theoretical and…
Helices are not generic outcomes of polymer collapse. Collapsed conformations of semiflexible polymers with isotropic attractions typically form globules, toroids, or rod-like structures, as seen in simulations and described by…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
Topological phases usually are unreachable in molecular solids, which are characteristic of weakly dispersed energy bands with a large gap, in contrast to topological materials. In this work, however, we propose that nontrivial electronic…
The stick-slip phenomenon widely exists in contact mechanics, from the macroscale to the nanoscale. During cholesteric-nematic unwinding by external fields, there is controversy regarding the role of planar surface anchoring, which may…
We explore the structure of nuclei and topological defects in the first-order phase transition between the nematic (N) and isotropic (I) phases in lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs). The LCLCs are formed by self-assembled molecular…
We introduce a model to describe columnar phases of chiral discotic liquid phases in which the normals to disc-like molecules are constrained to lie parallel to columnar axes. The model includes separate chiral interactions favoring,…
We give a topological classification of defect lines in cholesteric liquid crystals using methods from contact topology. By focusing on the role played by the chirality of the material, we demonstrate a fundamental distinction between…
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…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
Cholesteric Liquid Crystals (CLCs), subject to externally applied magnetic fields and confined between two parallel planar surfaces with strong homeotropic anchoring conditions, are found to undergo transitions to different types of…
We study the phase behavior of a system of charged colloidal particles that are electrostatically bound to an almost flat interface between two fluids. We show that, despite the fact that our experimental system consists of only $10^{3}$ -…
While topological phases have been extensively studied in amorphous systems in recent years, it remains unclear whether the random nature of amorphous materials can give rise to higher-order topological phases that have no crystalline…
In equilibrium liquid crystals, chirality leads to a variety of spectacular three-dimensional structures, but chiral and achiral phases with the same broken continuous symmetries have identical long-time, large-scale dynamics. In this…
Recent experiments on vesicles formed from block copolymers with liquid-crystalline side-chains reveal a rich variety of vesicle morphologies. The additional internal order ("structure") developed by these self-assembled block copolymer…
We have investigated the relationship between the morphology of helical particles and the features of the cholesteric (N$^\ast $) phase that they form. Using an Onsager-like theory, applied to systems of hard helices, we show that the…
The recent discovery of topological insulators has revived interest in the topological properties of insulating band structures. In this work, we extend the topological classification of insulating band structures to include certain point…