Related papers: Controllable Interlocking from Irregularity in Two…
Directional locking occurs when a particle moving over a periodic substrate becomes constrained to travel along certain substrate symmetry directions. Such locking effects arise for colloids and superconducting vortices moving over ordered…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
Two-component mixtures in optical lattices reveal a rich variety of different phases. We employ an exact diagonalization method to obtain the relevant correlation functions in hexagonal optical lattices to characterize those phases. We…
Complexity in materials often arises from competing interactions at the atomic length scale. One such example are the strongly correlated heavy-fermion materials where the competition between Kondo screening and antiferromagnetic ordering…
Biomolecules composed of a limited set of chemical building blocks can co-localize into distinct, spatially segregated compartments known as biomolecular condensates. While many condensates are known to form spontaneously via phase…
Using numerical simulations, we examine a simple model of two or more coupled one-dimensional channels of driven particles with repulsive interactions in the presence of quenched disorder. We find that this model exhibits a remarkably rich…
3D printing mechanically flexible composite materials with high electrical conductivity is currently hindered by the need to use high loading of conductive filler, which severely limits flexibility. Here, microstructural patterning of…
Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…
The nonlinear response of driven complex materials -- disordered magnets, amorphous media, crumpled sheets -- features intricate transition pathways where the system repeatedly hops between metastable states. % which encode memory effects.…
We study the nucleation and development of crack patterns in thin composite fibers under tension in this work. A fiber comprises an elastic core and an outer layer of a weaker brittle material. In recent tensile experiments on such…
The role of fixed degrees of freedom in soft/granular matter systems has broad applicability and theoretical interest. Here we address questions of the geometrical role that a scaffolding of fixed particles plays in tuning the threshold…
Overlaying commensurate optical lattices with various configurations called superlattices can lead to exotic lattice topologies and, in turn, a discovery of novel physics. In this study, by overlapping the maxima of lattices, a new isolated…
Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
A method is presented for approximating the effective conductivity of composite media with thin interphase regions, which is exact to first order in the interphase thickness. The approximations are computationally efficient in the sense the…
We analyze a bubble forming system composed of particles with competing long range repulsive and short range attractive interactions driven over a quasi-one-dimensional periodic substrate. We find various pinned and sliding phases as a…
Co-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) and nanostructured polymer matrix represents an intricate interplay of enthalpic or entropic forces. Particle size largely affects the phase behavior of the nanocomposite. Theoretical studies…
Instabilities and avalanches in granular flows represent hallmarks of failure: they can both disrupt industrial process flows and signal dangerous conditions, like those in grain silos and snowy mountaintops. We investigate intermittency…
Unconventional superconductivity and magnetism are intertwined on a microscopic level in a wide class of materials, including high-$T_c$ cuprates, iron pnictides, and heavy-fermion compounds. A new approach to this most fundamental and…
While the collective motion of active particles has been studied extensively, effective strategies to navigate particle swarms without external guidance remain elusive. We introduce a method to control the trajectories of two-dimensional…