Related papers: Twist-bend instability for toroidal DNA condensate…
Tearing instability, also known as plasmoid instability, is an effective mechanism to speed up magnetic reconnection process, working in a wide range of magnetized plasma systems with different spatial scales, ionization degrees, and…
The recently discovered three dimensional or bulk topological insulators are expected to exhibit exotic quantum phenomena. It is believed that a trivial insulator can be twisted into a topological state by modulating the spin-orbit…
The electrostatic contribution to twist rigidity of DNA is studied, and it is shown that the Coulomb self-energy of the double-helical sugar-phosphate backbone contributes considerably to twist rigidity of DNA--the electrostatic twist…
We study by simulation the physics of two colloidal particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The effective force between the pair is attractive at short range and favors…
We show theoretically that an initially homogeneous planar Couette flow of a concentrated polymeric fluid is linearly unstable to the growth of two-dimensional (2D) perturbations, within two widely used constitutive models: the…
The theoretical study of deformability of special sequence of DNA double helix TATA-box is presentated. The paper elaborates on the mechanisms of abnormal deformation of DNA TATA-box double helix that cannot be explained using the standard…
As 2D materials such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, and 2D polymers become more prevalent, solution processing and colloidal-state properties are being exploited to create advanced and functional materials. However, our…
Twisted and rope-like assemblies of filamentous molecules are common and vital structural elements in cells and tissue of living organisms. We study the intrinsic frustration occurring in these materials between the two-dimensional…
Capillary thinning of polymeric fluids is central to biological and industrial processes, yet the mechanisms governing thinning dynamics remain unresolved, especially for semi-flexible polymers. Using ideal solutions of semi-flexible DNA,…
We investigate topological phases in two-dimensional Bi/Sb honeycomb crystals considering planar, buckled, freestanding and deposited on a substrate structures. We use the multi-orbital tight-binding model and compare results with density…
Van der Waals heterostructures form a massive interdisciplinary research field, fueled by the rich material science opportunities presented by layer assembly of artificial solids with controlled composition, order and relative rotation of…
Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…
Polymer composites are ideal candidates for next generation biomimetic soft materials because of their exquisite bottom-up designability. However, the richness of behaviours comes at a price: the need for precise and extensive…
Multistep denaturation in a short circular DNA molecule is analyzed by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian model which accounts for the helicoidal geometry. Computation of melting profiles by the path integral method suggests that stacking…
We predict the existence of a totally new class of phases in weakly coupled, three-dimensional stacks of two-dimensional (2D) XY-models. These ``sliding phases'' behave essentially like decoupled, independent 2D XY-models with precisely…
Genomic DNA is constantly subjected to various mechanical stresses arising from its biological functions and cell packaging. If the local mechanical properties of DNA change under torsional and tensional stress, the activity of…
Recent magnetic tweezers experiments have reported systematic deviations of the twist response of double-stranded DNA from the predictions of the twistable worm-like chain model. Here we show, by means of analytical results and computer…
DNA bending is biologically important for genome regulation and is relevant to a range of nanotechnological systems. Recent results suggest that sharp bending is much easier than implied by the widely-used worm-like chain model; many of…
We study the effects of random bonds on spin chains that have an excitation gap in the absence of randomness. The dimerized spin-1/2 chain is our principal example. Using an asymptotically exact real space decimation renormalization group…