Related papers: Shape Elasticity in Colloidal Bent-Core Liquid Cry…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director cause long-range anisotropic interactions and…
Flagellated microswimmers B. Subtilis dispersed in a nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal form a living liquid crystal (LLC). The combination of the passive and active components allows us to analyze how the active…
The ability to manipulate polar entities with multiple external fields opens exciting possibilities for emerging functionalities and novel applications in spin systems, photonics, metamaterials, and soft matter. Liquid crystals (LCs),…
Mean-field calculations for the two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a large magnetic field with a partially filled Landau level with index $N\geq 2$ consistently yield ``stripe-ordered'' charge-density wave ground-states, for much the…
The behavior of a colloidal suspension of rod-like {\it fd} viruses in the nematic phase, subjected to steady state and transient shear flows is studied. The monodisperse nature of these rods combined with relatively small textural…
Rod-shaped colloids with attractive tips can form linear aggregates that may subsequently undergo hierarchical self-assembly into nematic fluids. Inspired by recent modelling efforts on chromonic liquid crystals, composed of discotic…
Colloidal particles in liquid crystals tend to induce topological defects and distortions of the molecular alignment within the surrounding anisotropic host medium, which results in elasticity-mediated interactions not accessible to their…
We report the discovery of a mixed orientational structure in the quasi-one-dimensional fluid of hard non-spherical bodies with the exact calculation of the thermodynamic and structural quantities using the transfer operator method. The…
We study the equilibrium shapes of vesicles, with an in-plane nematic order, using a Monte-Carlo scheme and show that highly curved shapes, like tubes and discs, with a striking similarity to the structures engendered by certain curvature…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
Disclination configurations of a nematic liquid crystal are studied within a self-consistent molecular field theory. The theory is based on a tensor order parameter, and can accommodate anisotropic elastic energies without the known…
This study theoretically investigates how anisotropic curved membrane components (CMCs) control vesicle morphology through curvature sensing, nematic alignment, topological defects, and volume constraints. By comparing arc-shaped and…
Topology can manifest itself in colloids when quantified by invariants like Euler characteristics of nonzero-genus colloidal surfaces, albeit spherical colloidal particles are most often studied, and colloidal particles with complex…
Using the classical density functional theory of freezing and Monte Carlo computer simulations, we explore the liquid-crystalline phase behavior of hard rectangles on flat and cylindrical manifolds. Moreover, we study the effect of a static…
The solidification of metallic droplets into powder particles involves a complex interplay between heat diffusion, surface tension, and geometric constraints. In confined, curved systems -- such as those encountered in atomisation,…
We introduce a model for a fluid of polydisperse rounded hard rectangles where the length and width of the rectangular core are fixed, while the roundness is taken into account by the convex envelope of a disk displaced along the perimeter…
Hard spherocylinders (cylinders of length $L$ and diameter $D$ capped at both ends with two hemispheres) provide a suitable model for investigating entropy-driven, mesophase formations in real colloidal fluids that are composed of rigid…
Active particles in anisotropic, viscoelastic fluids experience competing stresses which guide their trajectories. An aligned suspension of particles can trigger a hydrodynamic bend instability, but the elasticity of the fluid can drive…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…