Related papers: Escape into the Third Dimension in Cholesteric Liq…
We consider helical configurations of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) sandwiched between two substrates with homogeneous director orientation favored at both confining plates. We study the CLC twist wavenumber $q$ characterizing the…
Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…
Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) have a characteristic length scale given by the pitch of the twisted stacking of their constituent rod-like molecules. Under homeotropic anchoring conditions where the molecules prefer to orient…
Crystallography typically studies collections of point particles whose interaction forces are the gradient of a potential. Lifting this assumption generically gives rise in the continuum limit to a form of elasticity with additional moduli…
Here we revisit the topic of stationary and propagating solitonic excitations in self-repulsive three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates by quantitatively comparing theoretical analysis and associated numerical computations with our…
Various director configurations of a nematic liquid crystal, confined in a toroidal volume and subject to an external magnetic field, were evaluated numerically by performing finite element calculations in three dimensions. The equilibrium…
Using numerical simulations we show that a variety of novel colloidal crystalline states and multi-step melting phenomena occur on square and triangular two-dimensional periodic substrates. At half-integer fillings different kinds of…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
We model within the framework of finite elasticity two inherent instabilities observed in liquid crystal elastomers under uniaxial tension. First is necking which occurs when a material sample suddenly elongates more in a small region where…
We study by simulation the physics of two colloidal particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The effective force between the pair is attractive at short range and favors…
Three-dimensional topological solitons attract a great deal of interest in fields ranging from particle physics to cosmology but remain experimentally elusive in solid-state magnets. Here we numerically predict magnetic heliknotons, an…
We develop the theory of the coupling between in-plane order and out-of-plane geometry in twisted, two-dimensionally ordered filament bundles based on the non-linear continuum elasticity theory of columnar materials. We show that twisted…
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…
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.…
Active nematics contain topological defects which under sufficient activity move, create and annihilate in a chaotic quasi-steady state, called active turbulence. However, understanding active defects under confinement is an open challenge,…
Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…
Freestanding tubular crystals offer a general description of crystalline order on deformable surfaces with cylindrical topology, such as single-walled carbon nanotubes, microtubules, and recently reported colloidal assemblies. These systems…
We study the phase behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal shells with different geometries. We compare the cases of tangential and no anchoring at the surface, focussing on the former case, which leads to a competition between the…
Three-dimensional (3D) topological materials exhibit much richer phenomena than their lower-dimensional counterparts. Here, we propose self-localized topological states (i.e., topological solitons) in a 3D nonlinear photonic Chern…
We study stability and distortions of liquid crystal nematic order in a cell with a random heterogeneous substrate. Modeling this system as a bulk xy model with quenched disorder confined to a surface, we find that nematic order is…