Related papers: Spiraling Defect Cores in Chromonic Hedgehogs
We consider a one-dimensional variational problem arising in connection with a model for cholesteric liquid crystals. The principal feature of our study is the assumption that the twist deformation of the nematic director incurs much higher…
Conventional X-ray methods use incoming plane waves and result in discrete diffraction patterns when scattered at crystals. Here we find, by a systematic method, incoming waveforms which exhibit discrete diffraction patterns when scattered…
Understanding the structural origins of glass formation and mechanical response remains a central challenge in condensed matter physics. Recent studies have identified the local caging potential experienced by a particle due to its nearest…
In experiments which take a liquid crystal rapidly from the isotropic to the nematic phase, a dense tangle of defects is formed. In nematics, there are in principle both line and point defects (``hedgehogs''), but no point defects are…
What happens when fermions hop on a lattice with crystalline defects? The answer depends on topological quantum numbers which specify the action of lattice rotations and translations in the low energy theory. One can understand the…
Disordered elastic networks provide a framework for describing a wide variety of physical systems, ranging from amorphous solids, through polymeric fibrous materials to confluent cell tissues. In many cases, such networks feature two widely…
We show that discotics, lying deep in the columnar phase, can exhibit an x-ray scattering pattern which mimics that of a somewhat unusual smectic liquid crystal. This exotic, new glassy phase of columnar liquid crystals, which we call a…
The properties of crystals consisting of several components can be widely tuned. Often solid solutions are produced, where substitutional or interstitional disorder determines the crystal thermodynamic and mechanical properties. The…
We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
In a dilute two-dimensional electron gas, Coulomb interactions can stabilize the formation of a Wigner crystal. Although Wigner crystals are topologically trivial, it has been predicted that electrons in a partially-filled band can break…
There is currently intensive research into creating a large-scale quantum computer with trapped ions. It is well known that for a linear ion crystal in a harmonic potential, the ions near the center are more closely spaced compared to the…
Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
A novel phenomenological approach to the analysis of the conductivities of incoherent layered crystals is presented. It is based on the fundamental relationship between the resistive anisotropy $\sigma_{ab}/\sigma_c$ and the ratio of the…
We study light scattering by a hedgehog-like and linear disclination topological defects in a nematic liquid crystal by a metric approach. Light propagating near such defects feels an effective metric equivalent to the spatial part of the…
Understanding crystal growth and morphology is a fundamental issue in condensed matter physics. While crystal morphology due to the distribution and dynamics of the diffusion field has been intensively studied, how the intrinsic material…
A system of N classical Coulomb charges trapped in a harmonic potential displays shell structure and orientational ordering. The local density profile is well understood from theory, simulation, and experiment. Here, pair correlations are…
Structural aspects of crystal nucleation in undercooled liquids are explored using a nonlinear hydrodynamic theory of crystallization proposed recently [G. I. Toth et al., J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 26, 055001 (2014)], which is based on…