Related papers: First order alignment transition in an interfaced …
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
Recently, dynamical phase transitions have been identified based on the non-analytic behavior of the Loschmidt echo in the thermodynamic limit [Heyl et al., Phys.~Rev.~Lett.~{\bf 110}, 135704 (2013)]. By introducing conditional probability…
We revisit the phase structure and thermodynamics of QCD in the low temperature and high density region, where a strong, first-order phase transition is expected beyond the critical end point. By solving the quark gap equation in the…
A model for nonequilibrium wetting in 1+1 dimensions is introduced. It comprises adsorption and desorption processes with a dynamics which generically does not obey detailed balance. Depending on the rates of the dynamical processes the…
We demonstrate the generation of diverse material flow regimes in nematic liquid cells as driven by time-variable active surface anchoring, including no-net flow, oscillatory flow, steady flow, and pulsating flow. Specifically, we…
Phase behaviours of liquid crystals under external fields, conjugate to the nematic order and smectic order, are studied within the framework of mean field approximation developed by McMillan. It is found that phase diagrams, of temperature…
Experimental nuclear level densities at excitation energies below the neutron threshold follow closely a constant-temperature shape. This dependence is unexpected and poorly understood. In this work, a fundamental explanation of the…
First-order phase transitions are commonly associated with a discontinuous behavior of some of the thermodynamic variables and the presence of a latent heat. In the present study it is shown that this is not necessarily the case. Using…
We show that the isotropic to nematic liquid crystalline phase transition of F-actin can be either continuous or discontinuous, depending critically on the filament length. For F-actin with average filament length > 3 um, we confirm that…
We consider the hydrodynamic theory of an active fluid of self-propelled particles with nematic aligning interactions. This class of materials has polar symmetry at the microscopic level, but forms macrostates of nematic symmetry. We…
We present an exhaustive analysis of transport measurements performed in twinned YBa2Cu3O7 single crystals which stablishes that the vortex solid-liquid transition is first order when the magnetic field H is applied at an angle theta away…
The effects of an electric field on the flow patterns and defect dynamics of two-dimensional active nematics are numerically investigated. We found that field-induced director reorientation causes anisotropic active turbulence characterized…
Liquid crystal elastomers present a rich combination of effects associated with orientational symmetry breaking and the underlying rubber elasticity. In this work we focus on the effect of the network on the nematic--smectic-{\sl A}…
Active nematics are conceptually the simplest orientationally ordered phase of self-driven particles, but have proved to be a perennial source of surprises. We show here through numerical solution of coarse-grained equations for order…
We investigate the phase diagram of a two-dimensional driven-dissipative system of polaritons coupled to the excitonic reservoir. We find that two critical points exists. The first corresponds to the quasi-condensation and the second to a…
We observe a sequence of the anchoring transitions in nematic liquid crystals (NLC) sandwiched between the hydrophobic polyimide substrates treated with the plasma beam. There is a pronounced continuous transition from homeotropic to low…
Compared to isotropic liquids, orientational order of nematic liquid crystals makes their rheological properties more involved, and thus requires fine control of the flow parameters to govern the orientational patterns. In microfluidic…
We consider a phenomenological continuum theory for an extensile, overdamped active nematic liquid crystal, applicable in the dense regime. Constructed from general principles, the theory is universal, with parameters independent of any…
Motivated by the search for quantum liquid crystal phases in a gas of ultracold atoms and molecules, we study the density wave and nematic instabilities of dipolar fermions on the two-dimensional square lattice (in the $x-y$ plane) with…
Based on static and dynamical density functional theory, a phase-field-crystal model is derived which involves both the translational density and the orientational degree of ordering as well as a local director field. The model exhibits…