Related papers: Tilt order parameters, polarity and inversion phen…
This analysis of the electroclinic effect in ferroelectric liquid crystals with a first order Smectic-$A^*$--Smectic-$C^*$ (Sm-$A^*$--Sm-$C^*$) transition, shows they can be either Type I or Type II. In temperature--field parameter space…
The phase diagram of $Pr_{1-x}Ca_xMnO_3$ is modified x $\le$ 0.3, which suggests a reevaluation of the phase diagram of other manganites in that doping region. Rather than an orbital ordered phase reaching up to high temperatures of…
Unidirectional transport and localized cyclotron motion are two opposite physical phenomena. Here, we study the interplay effects between them on nonreciprocal lattices subject to a magnetic field. We show that, in the long-wavelength…
Semiflexible polymers in concentrated lyotropic solution are studied within a bead-spring model by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on the emergence of a smectic A phase and its properties. We systematically vary the density of the…
We investigate in this paper the ground state and the nature of the transition from an orientational ordered phase at low temperature to the disordered state at high temperature in a molecular crystal. Our model is a Potts model which takes…
We develop a rigorous, field-theoretical approach to the study of spontaneous emission in inertial and dissipative nematic liquid crystals, disclosing an alternative application of the massive Stueckelberg gauge theory to describe critical…
Complementary Neutron Spin Echo and X-ray experiments and Molecular Dynamics simulations have been performed on difluorotetrachloroethane (CFCl2-CFCl2) glassy crystal. Static, single-molecule reorientational dynamics and collective dynamics…
The Verwey phase transition in magnetite is analyzed on the basis of the Landau theory. The free energy functional is expanded in a series of components belonging to the primary and secondary order parameters. A low-temperature phase with…
In this article we consider systems of parallel hard {\it superellipsoids}, which can be viewed as a possible interpolation between ellipsoids of revolution and cylinders. Superellipsoids are characterized by an aspect ratio and an exponent…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
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…
It is argued that topological disorder in amorphous solids can be described by local strains related to local reference crystals and local rotations. An intuitive localization criterion is formulated from this point of view. The Inverse…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
We show that Landau theory for the isotropic, nematic, smectic A, and smectic C phases generically, but not ubiquitously, implies de Vries behavior. I.e., a continuous AC transition can occur with little layer contraction; the birefringence…
Motivated by the experimentally observed shear-induced destabilization and reorientation of smectic A like systems, we consider an extended formulation of smectic A hydrodynamics. We include both, the smectic layering (via the layer…
Simulations show that sliding bilayers of colloidal particles can exhibit a new phase, the ``melt-freeze'' phase, where the layers stochastically alternate between solidlike and liquidlike states. We introduce a mean field phenomenological…
By the adoption of a quaternion orientational order parameter to describe solidification, the topological origins of the thermal transport properties of crystalline and non-crystalline solid states are considered herein. Global…
Topological phase transition in a single material usually refers to transitions between a trivial band insulator and a topological Dirac phase, but the transition may also occur between different classes of topological Dirac phases.…
The melting process of the orbital order in Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 single crystal has been studied in detail as a function of temperature by neutron diffraction. It is demonstrated that a commensurate-incommensurate (C-IC) transition of the orbital…
Smectic liquid crystals are charcterized by layers that have a preferred uniform spacing and vanishing curvature in their ground state. Dislocations in the smectics play an important role in phase nucleation, layer reorientation, and…