Related papers: Flow Coupling Alters Topological Phase Transition …
Proliferation of defects is a mechanism that allows for topological phase transitions. Such a phase transition is found in two dimensions for the XY-model, which lies in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) universality class. The…
Any state of matter is classified according to its order, and the kind of order a physical system can posses is profoundly affected by its dimensionality. Conventional long-range order, like in a ferromagnet or a crystal, is common in…
The Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is a generic transition describing the loss of coherence in two dimensional systems, and has been invoked, for example, to describe the superconductor-insulator transition in thin films.…
We study the effect of particle mobility on phase transitions in a spin fluid in two dimensions. The presence of a phase transition of the BKT universality class is shown in an off-lattice model of particles with purely repulsive…
We study bond percolation on a one-parameter family of hierarchical small-world network, and find a meta-transition between the inverted BKT transition and the abrupt transition driven by changing the network topology. It is found that the…
Fluctuating hydrodynamics provides a model for fluids at mesoscopic scales where thermal fluctuations can have a significant impact on the behavior of the system. Here we investigate a model for fluctuating hydrodynamics of a single…
We employ a novel, unbiased renormalization-group approach to investigate non-equilibrium phase transitions in infinite lattice models. This allows us to address the delicate interplay of fluctuations and ordering tendencies in low…
We study a four-component polariton system in the optical parametric oscillator regime consisting of exciton/photon and signal/idler modes across the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. We show that all four components share…
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…
The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…
Using determinantal quantum Monte Carlo, we compute the properties of a lattice model with spin $\frac 1 2$ itinerant electrons tuned through a quantum phase transition to an Ising nematic phase. The nematic fluctuations induce…
Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…
We present a lattice Boltzmann algorithm for liquid crystal hydrodynamics. The coupling between the tensor order parameter and the flow is treated consistently allowing investigation of a wide range of non-Newtonian flow behavior. We…
Electronically-driven nematic order breaks the rotational symmetry of a system, e.g., through a Pomeranchuk instability of the Fermi surface, with a concomitant distortion of the lattice. As a result, in a metal, the nematic collective mode…
We investigate fermionic atoms subjected to an optical lattice and coupled to a high finesse optical cavity with photon losses. A transverse pump beam introduces a coupling between the atoms and the cavity field. We explore the steady state…
Active fluids display spontaneous turbulent-like flows known as active turbulence. Recent work revealed that these flows have universal features, independent of the material properties and of the presence of topological defects. However,…
Occurrence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is investigated by superfluid density measurements for two-dimensional (2D) disordered NbN films with disorder level very close to a superconductor-insulator transition…
We use active nematohydrodynamics to study the flow of an active fluid in a 3D microchannel, finding a transition between active turbulence and regimes where there is a net flow along the channel. We show that the net flow is only possible…
The nematic-to-isotropic orientational phase transition, or equivalently the $RP^2$ model, is considered in two dimensions and the question of the nature of the phase transition is addressed. Using powerful conformal techniques adapted to…
Using novel micro-printing techniques, we develop a versatile experimental setup that allows us to study how lateral confinement tames the active flows and defect properties of the microtubule/kinesin active nematic system. We demonstrate…