Related papers: Liquid crystal director fluctuations and surface a…
Quantitative theory of interbilayer interactions is essential to interpret x-ray scattering data and to elucidate these interactions for biologically relevant systems. For this purpose Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to obtain…
The effect of rough walls on the phase behaviour of a confined liquid crystal (LC) fluid is studied using constant pressure Monte Carlo simulations. The LC is modelled as a fluid of soft ellipsoidal molecules and the rough walls are…
Chiral condensed matter systems, such as liquid crystals and magnets, exhibit a host of spatially localized topological structures that emerge from the medium's tendency to twist and its competition with confinement and field coupling…
Three types of surface tensions can be defined for lipid membranes: the internal tension, $\sigma$, conjugated to the real membrane area in the Hamiltonian, the mechanical frame tension, $\tau$, conjugated to the projected area, and the…
The director configuration of disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external magnetic field is evaluated. Our method is a combination of a polynomial expansion for the director and of further analytical…
The Gaussian (saddle splay) rigidity of fluid membranes controls their equilibrium topology but is notoriously difficult to measure. In lipid mixtures, typical of living cells, linear interfaces separate liquid ordered (LO) from liquid…
Computer simulation is an important tool for scientific progress, especially when lab experiments are either extremely costly and difficult or lack the required resolution. However, all of the simulation methods come with limitations. In…
Colloidal particles suspended in liquid crystals can exhibit various effective anisotropic interactions that can be tuned and utilized in self-assembly processes. We simulate a two-dimensional system of hard disks suspended in a solution of…
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are employed to investigate the capillary fluctuations of steps on the surface of a model metal system. The fluctuation spectrum, characterized by the wave number ($k$) dependence of the mean squared…
The capillary forces exerted by liquid drops and bubbles on a soft solid are directly measured using molecular dynamics simulations. The force on the solid by the liquid near the contact line is not oriented along the liquid vapor interface…
We have carried out molecular dynamics simulations of the crystallization of hard spheres modelling colloidal systems that are studied in conventional and space-based experiments. We use microscopic probes to investigate the effects of…
We investigate the self-assembly (crystallisation) of particles with hard cores and isotropic, square-well interactions, using a Monte Carlo scheme to simulate overdamped Langevin dynamics. We measure correlation and response functions…
Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization…
The static friction between crystalline surfaces separated by a molecularly thin layer of adsorbed molecules is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. These molecules naturally lead to a finite static friction that is consistent…
Nematic liquid crystals at rough and fluctuating interfaces are analyzed within the Frank elastic theory and the Landau-de Gennes theory. We study specifically interfaces that locally favor planar anchoring. In the first part we reconsider…
Solid friction between two rough surfaces is often observed to increase logarithmically over time due to contact creeping. An intriguing question is whether a similar aging effect occurs in contact line (CL) friction over rough substrates.…
In simulations of crystals, unlike liquids or gases, it may happen that the properties of the studied system depend not only on the volume of the simulation cell but also on its shape. For such cases it is desirable to change the shape of…
Successful realization of ferromagnetic nematic liquid crystals has opened up the possibility to experimentally study a completely new set of fundamental physical phenomena. In this contribution we present a detailed investigation of some…
We implement molecular dynamics simulations in canonical ensemble to study the effect of confinement on a $2d$ crystal of point particles interacting with an inverse power law potential proportional to $r^{-12}$ in a narrow channel. This…
We present a grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation study of the phase diagram of a Lennard-Jones fluid adsorbed in a fractal and highly porous aerogel. The gel environment is generated from an off-lattice diffusion limited cluster-cluster…