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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…

Disclinations lines play a key role in many physical processes, from the fracture of materials to the formation of the early universe. Achieving versatile control over disclinations is key to developing novel electro-optical devices,…

Defects arise when nematic liquid crystals are under topological constraints at the boundary. Recently the study of defects has drawn a lot of attention. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between two-dimensional defects and…

Topological disclinations, crystallographic defects that break rotation lattice symmetry, have attracted great interest and exhibited wide applications in cavities, waveguides, and lasers. However, topological disclinations have thus far…

Disclination lines in three-dimensional nematic liquid crystals generically form closed loops whose topology is classified by homotopy theory. While this classification successfully captures global topological features, it does not encode…

In 3D nematic liquid crystals, disclination lines have a range of geometric structures. Locally, they may resemble $+1/2$ or $-1/2$ defects in 2D nematic phases, or they may have 3D twist. Here, we analyze the structure in terms of the…

Defects in liquid crystals are of great practical importance and theoretical interest. Despite tremendous efforts, predicting the location and transition of defects under various topological constraint and external field remains to be a…

Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…

Disclinations, first observed in mesomorphic phases, are relevant to a number of ill-ordered condensed matter media, with continuous symmetries or frustrated order. They also appear in polycrystals at the edges of grain boundaries. They are…

We give a topological classification of defect lines in cholesteric liquid crystals using methods from contact topology. By focusing on the role played by the chirality of the material, we demonstrate a fundamental distinction between…

We study the topology of smectic defects in two and three dimensions. We give a topological classification of smectic point defects and disclination lines in three dimensions. In addition we describe the combination rules for smectic point…

Topological defects are a ubiquitous phenomenon in diverse physical systems. In nematic liquid crystals (LCs), they are dynamic, physicochemically distinct, sensitive to stimuli, and are thereby promising for a range of applications.…

Topological defects are an essential part of the structure and dynamics of all liquid crystals, and they are particularly important in experiments and simulations on active liquid crystals. In a recent paper, Vromans and Giomi [Soft Matter,…

We study the relationship between topological defect formation and ground-state packings in a model of repulsions in external confining potentials. Specifically we consider screened 2D Coulombic repulsions, which conveniently parameterizes…

Topological defects can appear whenever there is some type of ordering. Its ubiquity in nature has been the subject of several studies, from early Universe to condensed matter. In this work, we investigated the annihilation dynamics of…

Liquid crystals generally support orientational singularities of the director field known as topological defects. These latter modifiy transport properties in their vicinity as if the geometry was non-Euclidean. We present a state of the…

We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able…

We show that back-flow, the coupling between the order parameter and the velocity fields, has a significant effect on the motion of defects in nematic liquid crystals. In particular the defect speed can depend strongly on the topological…

Topological defects are distinctive signatures of liquid crystals. They profoundly affect the viscoelastic behavior of the fluid by constraining the orientational structure in a way that inevitably requires global changes not achievable…

Topological defects, such as disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals, are fundamental to many physical systems and applications. In this work, we study the behavior of nematic disclinations in thin parallel-plate geometries with…