Related papers: Polarity from the Bottom Up: A Computational Frame…
Spontaneous self-assembly of hard convex polyhedra are known to form orientationally disordered crystalline phases, where particle orientations do not follow the same pattern as the positional arrangement of the crystal. A distinct type of…
Structural defects are ubiquitous in condensed matter, and not always a nuisance. For example, they underlie phenomena such as Anderson localization and hyperuniformity, and they are now being exploited to engineer novel materials. Here, we…
The task of experimentally investigating the inherently dual properties of a supersolid, a simultaneous superfluid and solid, has become more critical following the recent experimental exploration of supersolid regimes in dipolar…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
Many systems in nature and the synthetic world involve ordered arrangements of units on two-dimensional surfaces. We review here the fundamental role payed by both the topology of the underlying surface and its detailed curvature. Topology…
We study how hydrodynamic interactions affect the collective behaviour of active particles suspended in a fluid at high concentrations, with particular attention to lubrication forces which appear when the particles are very close to one…
Spontaneous onset of a low temperature topologically ordered phase in a 2-dimensional (2D) lattice model of uniaxial liquid crystal (LC) was debated extensively pointing to a suspected underlying mechanism affecting the RG flow near the…
The emergence of hydrodynamic bend instabilities in ordered suspensions of active particles is widely observed across diverse living and synthetic systems, and is considered to be governed by dipolar active stresses generated by the…
We present a theoretical model which describes the polarization modulated and layer undulated structure of the B7 phase and gives the phase transition from the synclinic ferroelectric B2 phase to the B7 phase as observed experimentally. The…
Polariton condensates have proved to be model systems to investigate topological defects, as they allow for direct and non-destructive imaging of the condensate complex order parameter. The fundamental topological excitations of such…
We develop a series of approximations to calculate free energy of a polar liquid. We show that long range nature of dipole interactions between the molecules leads to para-electric state instability at low temperatures and to a second-order…
Formation of oblique solitons by a flow of polariton condensate past an obstacle is considered. The flow is non-uniform due to a finite life-time of polaritons what changes drastically the conditions of formation of oblique solitons…
In a recent letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 75}, 2360 (1996)] we briefly discussed the existence and nature of ferroelectric order in positionally disordered dipolar materials. Here we report further results and give a complete description of…
We derive the full set of macroscopic equations necessary to describe the dynamics of systems with active polar order in a viscoelastic or elastic background. The active polar order is manifested by a second velocity, whose non-zero modulus…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
Self-propelled particles can spontaneously form dense phases from a dilute suspension in a process referred to as motility-induced phase separation. The properties of the out-of-equilibrium structures that are formed are governed by the…
We consider an ultra-small system of polarized bosons on an optical lattice with a ring topology interacting via long range dipole-dipole interactions. Dipoles polarized perpendicular to the plane of the ring reveal sharp transitions…
Identifying the regions responsible for plastic flow in amorphous solids remains an open problem, since structural disorder seems to prevent the direct application of concepts such as dislocations, topological defects that successfully…
Colloids are abundant in nature, science and technology, with examples ranging from milk to quantum dots and the "colloidal atom" paradigm. Similarly, liquid crystal ordering is important in contexts ranging from biological membranes to…