Related papers: Defect Dynamics in Cholesterics: Beyond the Peach-…
In a nematic gel, the appearance of nematic order is accompanied by a spontaneous elongation of the gel parallel to the nematic director. If such a gel is made chiral, it has a tendency to form a cholesteric helical texture, in which local…
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…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
Voids can be observed at various scales in ductile materials, frequently of sizes lower than the grain size, leading to porous single crystals materials. Two local deformation modes of porous ductile (single crystals) materials have been…
Most of crystalline materials develop an hysteresis on their deformation curve when a mechanical loading is applied in alternating directions. This effect, also known as the Bauschinger effect, is intimately related to the reversibile part…
The interplay of nonlinearity and topology results in many novel and emergent properties across a number of physical systems such as chiral magnets, nematic liquid crystals, Bose-Einstein condensates, photonics, high energy physics, etc. It…
Moire superlattices formed in van der Waals heterostructures due to twisting, lattice mismatch and strain present an opportunity for creating novel metamaterials with unique properties not present in the individual layers themselves.…
We study dynamical processes in a multi-domain (MD) structured nematic liquid crystal cell with a particular emphasis on the motion, creation and annihilation of disclinations. In the MD cell right- and left-handed director helices…
Disclination configurations of a nematic liquid crystal are studied within a self-consistent molecular field theory. The theory is based on a tensor order parameter, and can accommodate anisotropic elastic energies without the known…
In a crystalline solid under mechanical stress, a Frank-Read source is a pinned dislocation segment that repeatedly bows and detaches, generating concentric dislocation loops. We demonstrate that in nematic liquid crystals, an analogous…
Recently achieved chiral condensates open intriguing avenues for the study of the chiral properties induced by current-density interactions. An attempt to include these features in a spinor system is presented, which gives rise to a…
Active matter consists of self-propelled elements exhibits fascinating collective motions ranging from biological to artificial systems. Among wide varieties of active matter systems, reconstituted bio-filaments moving on molecular motor…
When a chiral isotropic elastomer is brought to low temperature cholesteric phase, the nematic degree of freedom tends to order and form a helix. Due to the nemato-elastic coupling, this also leads to elastic deformation of the polymer…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
We introduce a dislocation density tensor and derive its kinematic evolution law from a phase field description of crystal deformations in three dimensions. The phase field crystal (PFC) model is used to define the lattice distortion,…
The shape of a liquid-air interface advancing on a heterogeneous surface was studied experimentally, together with the force induced by the pinning of the contact line to surface defects. Different surfaces were considered with circular…
When soft matter is driven out of equilibrium its constituents interact via effective interactions that escape Newton's action-reaction principle. Prominent examples include the hydrodynamic interactions between colloidal particles driven…
Specific features of the defect modes of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) with an isotropic defect, as well as their photonic density of states, Q factor, and emission, have been investigated. The effect of the thicknesses of the defect…
Topological defects play a prominent role in the physics of two-dimensional materials. When driven out of equilibrium in active nematics, disclinations can acquire spontaneous self-propulsion and drive self-sustained flows upon…
In this study, we investigate the transition between the Newtonian and the viscoelastic regimes during the pinch-off of droplets of dilute polymer solutions and discuss its link to the coil-stretch transition. The detachment of a drop from…