Related papers: Electrically Tunable Heliconical Smectic Superstru…
Strongly interacting electrons can exhibit novel collective phases, among which the electronic nematic phases are perhaps the most surprising as they spontaneously break rotational symmetry of the underlying crystal lattice. The electron…
Combining topology and plasmonics paradigms in nanocolloidal systems may enable new means of pre-engineering desired composite material properties. Here we design and realize orientationally ordered assemblies of noble metal nanoparticles…
A flux liquid can condense into a smectic crystal in a pure layered superconductors with the magnetic field oriented nearly parallel to the layers. If the smectic order is commensurate with the layering, this crystal is {\sl stable} to…
Understanding the mechanisms and spatial correlations of crystallographic symmetry breaking in ferroelectric materials is essential to tuning their functional properties. While optical second harmonic generation (SHG) has long been utilized…
Numerous measurements of the dielectric constant $\epsilon$ of the recently discovered ferroelectric nematic ($N_F$) liquid crystal (LC) phase report extraordinarily large values of $\epsilon^\prime$ (up to ~30,000). We show that what is in…
Structural phase transformations of [110] electric field cooled Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-30%PbTiO3 (PMN-30%PT) crystals have been performed by x-ray diffraction in a field-cooled (FC) condition. A phase sequence of…
Weakly attractive interactions between the tips of rod-like colloidal particles affect their liquid-crystal phase behaviour due to a subtle interplay between enthalpy and entropy. Here, we employ molecular dynamics simulations on…
Epitaxial FeRh(100) films (CsCl structure, $\sim 10\ ML\ $ thick), prepared {\it in-situ} on a W(100) single crystal substrate, have been investigated via valence band and core level photoemission. The presence of the temperature-induced,…
Nematic liquid crystals have been known for more than a century, but it was not until the 60s-70s that, with the development of room temperature nematics, they became widely used in applications. Polar nematic phases have been long-time…
An ultracold gas of heteronuclear alkali dimer molecules with hyperfine structure loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice is investigated. The \emph{Hyperfine Molecular Hubbard Hamiltonian} (HMHH), an effective low-energy lattice…
In this study, we demonstrate that when a ferroelectric nematic is confined between two glass plates coated with ionic polymers, a modulated phase emerges in a narrow temperature range between the nematic and ferroelectric nematic phases.…
Recent discovery of HfO2-based and nitride-based ferroelectrics that are compatible to the semiconductor manufacturing process have revitalized the field of ferroelectric-based nanoelectronics. Guided by a simple design principle of charge…
Ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) are anisotropic mesogenic molecules which carry charges and therefore combine properties of liquid crystals, e.g., the formation of mesophases, and of ionic liquids, such as low melting temperatures and tiny…
Nematic liquid-crystal devices are a powerful tool to structure light in different degrees of freedom, both in classical and quantum regimes. Most of these devices exploit either the possibility of introducing a position-dependent phase…
The twist-grain-boundary (TGB) phases, characterized by a periodic, helical arrangement of blocks made of polar smectic phases, SmAF and SmCF, have been discovered. They have been observed for rod-like molecules with a strong longitudinal…
Periodic structures of phases with orientational order of molecules, but homogenous electron density distribution: a short pitch cholesteric, blue phase and twist-bend nematic phase, were probed by a resonant soft x-ray scattering (RSoXS)…
The topological properties of quasiparticles, such as skyrmions and vortices, have the potential to offer extraordinary metastability through topological protection, and drive motion with minimal electrical current excitation. This has…
The smectic C (smC) phase represents a unique class of liquid crystal phases characterised by the layered arrangement of molecules with tilted orientations with respect to layer normals. Building upon the real-valued tensorial smectic A…
We report theoretical results for the stability of half-quantum vortices (HQVs) in the superfluid phases of $^3$He confined in highly anisotropic Nafen aerogel. Superfluidity of $^3$He confined in Nafen is the realization of a "nematic…
Chiral nematic liquid crystals are one-dimensional photonic band-gap materials whose reflection wavelength can be well tuned by temperature, but only limited and irreversible tuning can be achieved by electric fields. In contrast, oblique…