Related papers: Defect Dynamics in Cholesterics: Beyond the Peach-…
Using tools and concepts from contact topology we show that non-vanishing twist implies conservation of the layer structure in cholesteric liquid crystals. This leads to a number of additional topological invariants for cholesteric…
All phases of matter, solid, liquid or gas, present some excess energy, compared to their bulk, at their interfaces with other materials. This excess of energy, known as the surface energy, is a fundamental property of matter and is…
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…
Blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals offer a spectacular example of naturally occurring disclination line networks. Here we numerically solve the hydrodynamic equations of motion to investigate the response of three types of blue…
We use lattice Boltzmann simulations of the Beris--Edwards formulation of nematodynamics to probe the response of a nematic liquid crystal with conflicting anchoring at the boundaries under shear and Poiseuille flow. The geometry we focus…
When chiral liquid crystals or magnets are subjected to applied fields or other anisotropic environments, the competition between favored twist and anisotropy leads to the formation of complex defect structures. In some cases, the defects…
Malleability of metals is an example of how dynamics of defects like dislocations induced by external stresses alters material properties and enables technological applications. However, these defects move merely to comply with the…
Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…
Nonsingular disclination dynamics in a uniaxial nematic liquid crystal is modeled within a mathematical framework where the kinematics is a direct extension of the classical way of identifying these line defects with singularities of a unit…
We consider dislocations in the framework of Eringen's nonlocal elasticity. The fundamental field equations of nonlocal elasticity are presented. Using these equations, the nonlocal force stresses of a straight screw and a straight edge…
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…
This paper reviews the complex ordered structures induced by chirality in liquid crystals. In general, chirality favors a twist in the orientation of liquid-crystal molecules. In some cases, as in the cholesteric phase, this favored twist…
A systematic computational and scaling analysis of defect textures in polygonal arrangement of cylindrical particles embedded in a cholesteric (Ch) liquid crystal matrix is performed using the Landau de Gennes model for chiral self…
The dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional isotropic droplet in a cholesteric liquid crystal medium under symmetric shear flow is studied by lattice Boltzmann simulations. We consider a geometry in which the flow direction is along the axis of…
We numerically study the dynamics of quasi-two dimensional cholesteric liquid crystal droplets in the presence of a time-dependent electric field, rotating at constant angular velocity. A surfactant sitting at droplet interface is also…
Even though chiral nematic phases were the first liquid crystals experimentally observed more than a century ago, the origin of the thermodynamic stability of cholesteric states is still unclear. In this Letter we address the problem by…
We simulate a colloidal particle (radius R) in a cholesteric liquid crystal (pitch p) with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The local defect structure evolves from a dipolar pair of surface defects (boojums) at…
Using molecular simulations and classical density functional theory, we study the liquid-crystalline phase behaviour of a series of bent rod-like mesogens with a controlled degree of chirality introduced through a twist at the centre of the…
We describe the geometry of bend distortions in twist-bend nematic liquid crystals in terms of their fundamental degeneracies, which we call $\beta$ lines. These represent a new class of line-like topological defect. We use them to…
Noncollinear spin textures in low-dimensional magnetic systems have been studied for decades because of their extraordinary properties and promising applications derived from the chirality and topological nature. However, material…