Related papers: Isotropic-Nematic Transition in Liquid-Crystalline…
We consider the orientational instabilities, both homogeneous and spatially periodic, developing in a nematic liquid crystal under rectilinear oscillatory Couette flow for director alignment perpendicular to the flow plane. Using numerical…
In this paper, we discuss the equilibrium phases and collapse transitions of a lyotropic nematic gel immersed in an isotropic solvent. A nematic gel consists of a cross-linked polymer network with rod-like molecules embedded in it. Upon…
The stability of the equilibrium configurations of a nematic liquid crystal confined between two coaxial cylinders is analysed when a radial electric field is applied and the flexoelectric effect is taken into account. The threshold for…
We investigate the effect of an anisotropic substrate on the turbulent dynamics of a simulated two dimensional active nematic. This is introduced as an anisotropic friction and an effective anisotropic viscosity, with the orientation of the…
In a nematic gel, the appearance of nematic order is accompanied by a spontaneous elongation of the gel parallel to the nematic director. If such a gel is made chiral, it has a tendency to form a cholesteric helical texture, in which local…
The yielding of foams, concentrated emulsions, pastes and other soft materials under applied strain is often characterized by measuring the complex shear modulus as a function of strain amplitude at low frequency. Results obtained for…
We consider the weakly first order phase transition between the isotropic and ordered phases of nematics in terms of the behavior of topological line defects. Analytical and Monte Carlo results are presented for a new coarse-grained lattice…
We investigate the orientational behaviour of a homeotropically aligned nematic liquid crystal subjected to an oscillatory plane Poiseuille flow produced by an alternating pressure gradient. For small pressure amplitudes the director…
Two dimensional crystalline membranes in isotropic embedding space exhibit a flat phase with anomalous elasticity, relevant e.g., for graphene. Here we study their thermal fluctuations in the absence of exact rotational invariance in the…
We study the linear dynamic mechanical response of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline elastomers under shear in the geometry that allows the director rotation. The aspects of time-temperature superposition are discussed at some length…
We study the influence of fluctuations in molecular shape on the stability of the biaxial nematic phase by generalizing the mean field model of Mulder and Ruijgrok [Physica A {\bf 113}, 145 (1982)]. We limit ourselves to the case when the…
Substrates which are chemically or topographically patterned induce a variety of liquid crystal textures. The response of the liquid crystal to competing surface orientations, typical of patterned substrates, is determined by the anisotropy…
We consider planar liquid crystal elastomers: two dimensional objects made of anisotropic responsive materials, that upon activation remain flat however change their planar shape. We derive a closed form, analytical solution based on the…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit both crystal-like and fluid-like features. In particular, the propagation of an acoustic wave shows an unexpected occurrence of some of the solid-like features at the hydrodynamic level, namely, the…
A theoretical study of the variation of thermodynamic and transport properties of calamitic liquid crystals across the isotropic-nematic phase transition is carried out by calculating the {\it wavenumber (k) and time (t)} dependent…
Studying the response of materials to strain can elucidate subtle properties of electronic structure in strongly correlated materials. So far, mostly the relation between strain and resistivity, the so called elastoresistivity, has been…
We study the flow behaviour of a twist-bend nematic $(N_{TB})$ liquid crystal. It shows three distinct shear stress ($\sigma$) responses in a certain range of temperatures and shear rates ($\dot{\gamma}$). In Region-I,…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…
For monodomain nematic elastomers, we construct generalised elastic-nematic constitutive models combining purely elastic and neoclassical-type strain-energy densities. Inspired by recent developments in stochastic elasticity, we extend…
We develop the scaled particle theory to describe the thermodynamic properties and orientation ordering of a binary mixture of hard spheres (HS) and hard spherocylinders (HSC) confined in a disordered porous medium. Using this theory the…