Related papers: Low-temperature structural study of smectic C$_A$*…
Recent experiments and computer simulations show that supercooled liquids around the glass transition temperature are "dynamically heterogeneous" [1]. Such heterogeneity is expected from the random first order transition theory of the glass…
Modern detector technology and highly brilliant fourth-generation synchrotrons allow to improve the temporal resolution in time-resolved diffraction studies. Profiting from this, we applied temperature scanning X-ray photon correlation…
Below the melting temperature $T_m$ crystals are the stable phase of typical elemental or molecular systems. However, cooling down a liquid below $T_m$, crystallization is anything but inevitable. The liquid can be supercooled, eventually…
Studies of low-frequency resistance noise demonstrate that glassy freezing occurs in a two-dimensional electron system in silicon in the vicinity of the metal-insulator transition (MIT). The width of the metallic glass phase, which…
The dynamics of active smectic liquid crystals confined on a spherical surface is explored through an active phase field crystal model. Starting from an initially randomly perturbed isotropic phase, several types of topological defects are…
We report an experimental study on the temperature and number evolution of cold cesium atoms diffusively cooled inside a wall-coated glass cell by measuring the absorption profile of the 62S1/2 (F=4)-62P3/2 (F'=5) transition line with a…
The nature of defects in amorphous materials, analogous to vacancies and dislocations in crystals, remains elusive. Here we explore their nature in a three-dimensional microscopic model glass-former which describes granular, colloidal,…
Structural studies by synchrotron x-ray diffraction on two main-chain smectic-C elastomers reveal the presence of two different relaxation mechanisms in these systems at low and high strains. At low strains, the smectic layers are…
We construct a mean field theory for the lattice model of a structural glass and solve it using the replica method and one step replica symmetry breaking ansatz; this theory becomes exact in the limit of infinite dimensions. Analyzing…
We present theoretical study of a single disclination motion in a thin free standing hexatic (or smectic-C) film, driven by a large-scale inhomogeneity in the bond (or director) angle. Back-flow effects and own dynamics of the bond angle…
The anelastic spectra (elastic energy loss and dynamic modulus versus temperature) of La1-xCaxMnO3 have been measured for 0.33< x < 0.5. A peak in the imaginary part of the elastic susceptibility is found slightly below the Curie…
The problems of the intermediate-range atomic structure of glasses and of the mechanism for the glass transition are approached from the low-temperature end in terms of a scenario for the atomic organization that justifies the use of an…
Optical birefringence measurements on a rod-like liquid crystal (8OCB), imbibed in silica channels (7 nm diameter), are presented and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational and positional order of the confined liquid…
We investigate the low temperature properties of two-dimensional Lennard-Jones glass films, prepared in silico both by liquid cooling and by physical vapor deposition. We identify deep in the solid phase a crossover temperature $T^*$, at…
Using a generalized Landau theory involving orientational, layering, tilt, and biaxial order parameters we analyze the smectic-A* and smectic-C* (Sm-A* -- Sm-C*) transition, showing that a combination of small orientational order and large…
A dynamical theory is constructed to describe spectral diffusion in glasses in the temperature range near 1 Kelvin on long time scales. The theory invokes interacting tunneling centers (TLS) which provide an excess contribution to the…
While lot of measurements describe the relaxation dynamics of the liquid state, experimental data of the glass dynamics at high temperatures are much scarcer. We use ultrafast scanning calorimetry to expand the timescales of the glass to…
The liquid crystalline 4-pentylphenyl-4'-decyloxythiobenzoate is investigated in various temperature programs for determination of crystallization kinetics and glassforming properties. The Avrami model, Augis-Bennett method and…
We present a model for smectic elastomer membranes which includes elastic and liquid crystalline degrees of freedom. Based on our model, we determined the qualitative phase diagram of a smectic elastomer membrane using mean-field theory.…
We use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of a simple glass-forming system to investigate how its liquid-gas phase separation kinetics depends on temperature. A shallow quench leads to a fully demixed liquid-gas system whereas a…