Related papers: Thick liquid crystalline cholesteric shells
In the present paper, we investigate the polarization properties of the cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) with an isotropic/anisotropic defect inside them. Possibilities of amplification of the polarization plane rotation and stabilization…
We stabilize nematic droplets with handles against surface-tension-driven instabilities using a yield-stress material as outer fluid and study the complex nematic textures and defect structures that result from the competition between…
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…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
We present experiments on chiral active polar particles, realized as vibrated granular rods, revealing the formation of robust ``skipping orbits'' at hard boundaries. These edge states exhibit a net circulation opposite to the particles'…
In this work, we study the stationary behavior of an assembly of independent chiral active particles under confinement by employing an extension of the active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model. The chirality modeled by means of an effective torque…
We have numerically studied a liquid composed of achiral, bent-shaped molecules built of tangent spheres. The system is known to spontaneously break mirror symmetry, as it forms a macroscopically chiral, twist-bend nematic phase [Phys. Rev.…
We demonstrate that chiral hinge modes naturally emerge in insulating crystals undergoing a slow cyclic evolution that changes the Chern-Simons axion angle $\theta$ by $2\pi$. This happens when the surface (not just the bulk) returns to its…
We propose a model describing liquid-solid phase coexistence in mixed lipid membranes by including explicitly the occurrence of a rippled phase. For a single component membrane, we employ a previous model in which the membrane thickness is…
Rheological properties of chiral active materials have been an important area of research in the recent past, in particular regarding odd terms in their mechanical response. While much progress has been made in the study of odd viscous…
We use numerical simulations to study the crystallization of monodisperse systems of hard aspherical particles. We find that particle shape and crystallizability can be easily related to each other when particles are characterized in terms…
Charged colloidal crystals exhibit a subtle interplay between electrostatic screening and elastic deformation. In an anisotropic elastic medium the coupling between dilation and the local ionic environment becomes direction dependent,…
We study the effects of chirality at the segment scale on the thermodynamics of block copolymer melts using self consistent field theory. In linear diblock melts where segments of one block prefer a twisted, or cholesteric, texture, we show…
The results of a numerical investigation of fluidized beds of spherical particles in a narrow vertical cylindrical pipe, with particular attention to the spontaneous settling along the wall, are reported. Starting from a steady fluidized…
Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic and bacterial active matter. Whether collective crystallization phenomena can occur in groups…
We model a cholesteric liquid crystal as a planar uniaxial multilayer system, where the orientation of each layer differs slightly from that of the adjacent one. This allows us to analytically simplify the otherwise acutely complicated…
We simulate colloids (radius $R \sim 1\mu$m) trapped at the interface between a cholesteric liquid crystal and an immiscible oil, at which the helical order (pitch p) in the bulk conflicts with the orientation induced at the interface,…
Confining a liquid crystal imposes topological constraints on the orientational order, allowing global control of equilibrium systems by manipulation of anchoring boundary conditions. In this article, we investigate whether a similar…
The skyrmion crystal is a periodic array of a swirling topological spin texture. Since it is regarded as an interference pattern by multiple helical spin density waves, the texture changes with the relative phases among the constituent…
Monte Carlo simulation, experiment and continuum theory are used to examine the anchoring exhibited by a nematic liquid crystal at a patterned substrate comprising a periodic array of rectangles that, respectively, promote vertical and…