Related papers: Phases and Transitions in Phantom Nematic Elastome…
Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…
Nematic order is the breaking of rotational symmetry in the presence of translational invariance. While originally defined in the context of liquid crystals, the concept of nematic order has arisen in crystalline matter with discrete…
The electronic nematic phase occurs when the point-group symmetry of the lattice structure is broken, due to electron-electron interactions. We study a model for the nematic phase on a square lattice with emphasis on the phase transition…
We consider a phenomenological continuum theory for an extensile, overdamped active nematic liquid crystal, applicable in the dense regime. Constructed from general principles, the theory is universal, with parameters independent of any…
Optical birefringence and light absorption measurements reveal four regimes for the thermotropic behavior of a nematogen liquid (7CB) upon sequential filling of parallel-aligned capillaries of 12 nm diameter in a monolithic, mesoporous…
We study the dynamics of orientational phase ordering in fluid membranes. Through numerical simulation we find an unusually slow coarsening of topological texture, which is limited by subdiffusive propagation of membrane curvature. The…
The mechanical properties of thermally excited two-dimensional crystalline membranes can depend dramatically on their geometry and topology. A particularly relevant example is the effect on the crumpling transition of holes in the membrane.…
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,…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
We investigate experimentally the dynamic phase transition of a two-dimensional active nematic layer interfaced with a passive liquid crystal. Under a temperature ramp that leads to the transition of the passive liquid into a highly…
Lamellar or smectic phases often have an intricate intralamellar structure that remains scarcely understood from a microscopic viewpoint. In this work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of volume exclusion and…
Active fluids display spontaneous turbulent-like flows known as active turbulence. Recent work revealed that these flows have universal features, independent of the material properties and of the presence of topological defects. However,…
Ferroelectric nematic phases are a new class of polar fluids in which spontaneous polarization is directly coupled to the orientational order, providing unique opportunities for creating self-organized materils with spatially modulated…
We use density-functional theory, of the fundamental-measure type, to study the relative stability of the biaxial nematic phase, with respect to non-uniform phases such as smectic and columnar, in fluids made of hard board-like particles…
We study the phase behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal shells with different geometries. We compare the cases of tangential and no anchoring at the surface, focussing on the former case, which leads to a competition between the…
We study the collective dynamics of elongated swimmers in a very thin fluid layer by devising long, filamentous, non-tumbling bacteria. The strong confinement induces weak nematic alignment upon collision, which, for large enough density of…
Polyhedral nematics are examples of exotic orientational phases that possess a complex internal symmetry, representing highly non-trivial ways of rotational symmetry breaking, and are subject to current experimental pursuits in colloidal…
Electronic nematic phases are broadly characterized by spontaneously broken rotational symmetry. Although they have been widely recognized in the context of high temperature cuprates, bilayer ruthenates, and iron-based superconductors, the…
Liquid crystal materials exhibiting up to three nematic phases are reported. Dielectric response measurements show that while the lower temperature nematic phase has ferroelectric order and the highest temperature nematic phase is apolar,…