Related papers: Tunable Three-Dimensional Architecture of Nematic …
Anisotropic fluids appear in a diverse array of systems, from liquid-crystal displays to bacterial swarms, and are characterized by orientational order. Large colloidal particles immersed in such environments disturb the medium's…
We study avenues to shape multistability and shape-morphing in flexible crystalline membranes of cylindrical topology, enabled by glide mobility of dislocations. Using computational modeling, we obtain states of mechanical equilibrium…
Integer winding disclinations are unstable in a nematic and are removed by an `escape into the third dimension', resulting in a non-singular texture. This process is frustrated in a cholesteric material due to the requirement of maintaining…
Using Landau-de Gennes effective theory for nematic liquid crystals we analyse the structure of rectilinear n=1/2 smooth disclination line in the case of equal elastic constants. We find that at certain temperature there is an exact…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…
We investigate the structure of nematic liquid crystal thin films described by the Landau--de Gennes tensor-valued order parameter with Dirichlet boundary conditions of nonzero degree. We prove that as the elasticity constant goes to zero a…
Tunable dielectric meta-surface nanostructures offer incredible performance in optical application due to their extraordinary tunability of the polarization and engineering the dispersion of light with low loss in infrared range. In this…
Chiral photonics provides powerful routes for controlling the light handedness, yet nonlinear chiral responses are typically associated with intricate three-dimensional systems. Here, we demonstrate that strong nonlinear chirality can…
Highly engineered materials are arousing great interest because of their ability to manipulate heat, as described by coordinate transformation approach. Based on the recently developed analog gravity models, this paper presents how a simple…
Optomechanical manipulation of nanoparticles enabling ultimate control over their 3D motion is nowadays one of the most highly demanded links between optics, biology, medicine, microfluidics, etc., paving the way for a plethora of emerging…
Liquid crystal elastomers and glasses can have significant shape change determined by their director patterns. Cones deformed from circular director patterns have non-trivial Gaussian curvature localised at tips, curved interfaces, and…
Nonlinear optical phenomena are generally governed by geometry in matter systems, as they depend on the spatial arrangement of atoms within materials or molecules. Metasurfaces, through precisely designed geometries on a subwavelength…
The assembly of colloids in nematic liquid crystals via topological defects has been extensively studied for spherical particles, and investigations of other colloid shapes have revealed a wide array of new assembly behaviors. We show,…
The phase-field-crystal model is used to access the structure and thermodynamics of interfaces between two coexisting liquid crystalline phases in two spatial dimensions. Depending on the model parameters there is a variety of possible…
We investigate the switching dynamics of multistable nematic liquid crystal devices. In particular we identify a remarkably simple 2-dimensional (2D) device which exploits hybrid alignment at the surfaces to yield a bistable response. We…
We investigate the emergence of orientational order among +1/2 disclinations in active nematic liquid crystals. Using a combination of theoretical and experimental methods, we show that +1/2 disclinations have short-range antiferromagnetic…
Identifying the regions responsible for plastic flow in amorphous solids remains an open problem, since structural disorder seems to prevent the direct application of concepts such as dislocations, topological defects that successfully…
The role of applied fields on the structure of liquid crystals confined to shell geometries has been studied in past theoretical work, providing strategies to produce liquid crystal shells with controlled defect structure or valence.…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
Disclinations are ubiquitous lattice defects existing in almost all crystalline materials. In two-dimensional nanomaterials, disclinations lead to the warping and deformation of the hosting material, yielding non-Euclidean geometries.…