Related papers: Passive defect driven morphogenesis in nematic mem…
Topological defects -- locations of local mismatch of order -- are a universal concept playing important roles in diverse systems studied in physics and beyond, including the universe, various condensed matter systems, and recently, even…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
We study the dynamics of orientational phase ordering in fluid membranes. Through numerical simulation we find an unusually slow coarsening of topological texture, which is limited by subdiffusive propagation of membrane curvature. The…
We use density--functional theory to study the structure of two-dimensional defects inside a circular nematic nanocavity. The density, nematic order parameter, and director fields, as well as the defect core energy and core radius, are…
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…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
We propose an extension of Frank-Oseen's elastic energy for bulk nematic liquid crystals which is based on the hypothesis that the fundamental deformations allowed in nematic liquid crystals are splay, twist and bend. The extended elastic…
We develop a fully coupled theoretical description of dislocation dynamics on deformable crystalline surfaces, using continuum modeling and the amplitude-phase-field crystal (APFC) framework extended to curved geometries. We derive a…
In this study, we investigate the optical properties of linear and nonlinear topological in-phase, out-of-phase, and edge modes in a defected dimer lattice with fourth-order diffraction, encompassing their bifurcation characteristics,…
Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…
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 shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…
We suggest a novel shape matching algorithm for three-dimensional surface meshes of disk or sphere topology. The method is based on the physical theory of nonlinear elasticity and can hence handle large rotations and deformations.…
Collective cell migration governs a range of physiological and pathological processes, from tissue morphogenesis to cancer invasion, in which topological defects arise as an inevitable consequence of frequent cellular rearrangement and…
We study the shapes of elastic membranes under the simultaneous exertion of tensile and compressive forces when the translational symmetry along the tension direction is broken. We predict a multitude of novel morphological phases in…
Nematic interfaces are thin fluid films, ideally two-dimensional, endowed with an in-plane degenerate nematic order. In this letter we examine a generalisation of the classical Plateau problem to an axisymmetric nematic interface bounded by…
The density and correlations of topological defects are investigated numerically in a model of a d=2 elastic medium subject to a periodic quenched random potential. The computed density of defects decreases approximately exponentially with…
Topological defects in nematically aligned cell populations play a critical role in modulating collective motion, from microbial colonies to epithelial tissues. Despite the potential of manipulating such topological defects to control…
We consider a phenomenological continuum model for an active nematic fluid and show a universal, model independent, instability which renders the homogeneous nematic state unstable to order fluctuations. Using numerical and analytic tools…
Anisotropic fluids, such as nematic liquid crystals, can form non-spherical equilibrium shapes known as tactoids. Predicting the shape of these structures as a function of material parameters is challenging and paradigmatic of a broader…