Related papers: Phase Ordering in Nematic Liquid Crystals

The optical birefringence of rod-like nematogens (7CB, 8CB), imbibed in parallel silica channels with 10 nm diameter and 300 micrometer length, is measured and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational order of the…

Lattice Boltzmann simulations are used to explore the behavior of liquid crystals subject to Poiseuille flow. In the nematic regime at low shear rates we find two possible steady state configurations of the director field. The selected…

Motivated by recent experiments, the isotropic-nematic phase transition in chromonic liquid crystals is studied. As temperature decreases, nematic nuclei nucleate, grow, and coalesce, giving rise to tactoid microstructures in an isotropic…

Liquid crystalline phases of matter permeate nature and technology, with examples ranging from cell membranes to liquid-crystal displays. Remarkably, electronic liquid crystal phases can exist in two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) at…

We propose a hybrid lattice Boltzmann algorithm to simulate the hydrodynamics of colloidal particles inside a liquid crystalline host. To validate our algorithm, we study the static and the microrheology of a colloid in a nematic, with…

Motivated by recent progress in understanding the interplay between lattice and electronic topological phases, we consider quantum-melting transitions of {\it weak} quantum liquid crystals, a crystal and a nematic phase, in which electrons…

Liquid crystal droplets are of great interest from physics and applications. Rigorous mathematical analysis is challenging as the problem involves harmonic maps (and in general the Oseen-Frank model), free interfaces and topological defects…

We develop a fully microscopic, statistical mechanics approach to study phase transitions in Ising systems with competing interactions at different scales. Our aim is to consider orientational and positional order parameters in a unified…

In equilibrium hard-rod fluids, and in effective hard-rod descriptions of anisotropic soft-particle systems, the transition from the isotropic (I) phase to the nematic phase (N) is observed above the rod aspect ratio L/D = 3.70 as predicted…

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…

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),…

We use lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the effect of shear on the phase ordering of a two-dimensional binary fluid. The shear is imposed by generalising the lattice Boltzmann algorithm to include Lees-Edwards boundary conditions. We…

The phase-field-crystal model is used to access the structure and thermodynamics of interfaces between two coexisting liquid crystalline phases in two spatial dimensions. Depending on the model parameters there is a variety of possible…

Phase separation in a complex fluid with lamellar order has been studied in the case of cold thermal fronts propagating diffusively from external walls. The velocity hydrodynamic modes are taken into account by coupling the…

We experimentally investigate the nature of 2D phase transitions in a quasi-2D granular fluid. Using a surface decorated with periodically spaced dimples we observe interfacial tension between coexisting liquid and crystal phases.…

This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…

The theory of phase ordering dynamics -- the growth of order through domain coarsening when a system is quenched from the homogeneous phase into a broken-symmetry phase -- is reviewed, with the emphasis on recent developments. Interest will…

We investigate the dynamical evolution of a thermodynamically unstable crystal surface into a hill-and-valley structure. We demonstrate that, for quasi one-dimensional ordering, the equation of motion maps exactly to the modified…

Based on static and dynamical density functional theory, a phase-field-crystal model is derived which involves both the translational density and the orientational degree of ordering as well as a local director field. The model exhibits…

Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…