Related papers: Hedgehog topological defects in 3D amorphous solid…
Topological defects are singularities within a field that cannot be removed by continuous transformations. The definition of these irregularities requires an ordered reference configuration, calling into question whether they exist in…
The deformation mechanism in amorphous solids subjected to external shear remains poorly understood because of the absence of well-defined topological defects mediating the plastic deformation. The notion of soft spots has emerged as a…
Because of the inevitably disordered background, structural defects are not well-defined concepts in amorphous solids. In order to overcome this difficulty, it has been recently proposed that topological defects can be still identified in…
Recent studies point out far-reaching connections between the topological characteristics of structural glasses and their material properties, paralleling results in quantum physics that highlight the relevance of the nature of the…
The plastic deformation of crystalline materials can be understood by considering their structural defects such as disclinations and dislocations. Although glasses are also solids, their structure resembles closely the one of a liquid and…
Identifying the regions responsible for plastic flow in amorphous solids remains an open problem, since structural disorder seems to prevent the direct application of concepts such as dislocations, topological defects that successfully…
The microscopic mechanism by which amorphous solids yield plastically under an externally applied stress or deformation has remained elusive in spite of enormous research activity in recent years. Most approaches have attempted to identify…
The plasticity of amorphous solids undergoing shear is characterized by quasi-localized rearrangements of particles. While many models of plasticity exist, the precise relationship between plastic dynamics and the structure of a particle's…
In amorphous materials, plasticity is localized and occurs as shear transformations. It was recently shown by Wu et al. that these shear transformations can be predicted by applying topological defect concepts developed for liquid crystals…
Topological defects (TDs) are crucial for understanding important physical properties of crystalline materials including mechanical failure, ion transport, and two-dimensional melting. This concept has not translated to disordered materials…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
Mixing theoretical topological structures with cutting-edge simulation methods, a recent study in Nature Communications has finally confirmed the existence of topological defects in glasses and their crucial role for plasticity.
Amorphous solids lack long-range order. Therefore identifying structural defects -- akin to dislocations in crystalline solids -- that carry plastic flow in these systems remains a daunting challenge. By comparing many different structural…
Magnetic topological defects are energetically stable spin configurations characterized by symmetry breaking. Vortices and skyrmions are two well-known examples of 2D spin textures that have been actively studied for both fundamental…
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,…
Understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind plastic instabilities and shear band formation in amorphous media under applied deformation remains a long-standing challenge. Leveraging on the mathematical concept of topology, we revisit…
Eshelby-like quadrupolar structures serve as the fundamental microscopic units for characterizing plastic instabilities in amorphous solids and play a crucial role in explaining their mechanical failure, including the formation of shear…
Topological constraint theory has become an increasingly popular tool to predict the compositional dependence of glass properties or pinpoint promising compositions with tailored functionalities. This approach reduces complex disordered…
Amorphous solids such as glass are ubiquitous in our daily life and have found broad applications ranging from window glass and solar cells to telecommunications and transformer cores. However, due to the lack of long-range order, the…
Structural defects within amorphous packings of symmetric particles can be characterized using a machine learning approach that incorporates structure functions of radial distances and angular arrangement. This yields a scalar field,…