Related papers: Defect generation and deconfinement on corrugated …
Periodic wrinkling of a rigid capping layer on a deformable substrate provides a useful method for templating surface topography for a variety of novel applications. Many experiments have studied wrinkle formation during the compression of…
We propose a new type of morphological instability in the diffusion-limited growth of faceted crystals from the vapor phase that can explain the formation of thin ice plates at temperatures near -15 C. The instability appears when the…
Topological defects are a universal concept across many disciplines, such as crystallography, liquid-crystalline physics, low-temperature physics, cosmology, and even biology. In nematic liquid crystals, topological defects called…
We report a comprehensive analysis of the ground state properties of axisymmetric toroidal crystals based on the elastic theory of defects on curved substrates. The ground state is analyzed as a function of the aspect ratio of the torus,…
We consider quantum phase transitions with global symmetry breakings that result in the formation of topological defects. We evaluate the number densities of kinks, vortices, and monopoles that are produced in $d=1,2,3$ spatial dimensions…
Thin elastic solids are easily deformed into a myriad of three-dimensional shapes, which may contain sharp localized structures as in a crumpled candy wrapper, or have smooth and diffuse features like the undulating edge of a flower.…
The best-understood crystal ordering transition is that of two-dimensional freezing, which proceeds by the rapid eradication of lattice defects as the temperature is lowered below a critical threshold. But crystals that assemble on closed…
A non-relativistic scalar particle moving on a curved surface undergoes a geometric scattering whose behavior is sensitive to the theoretically ambiguous values of the intrinsic and extrinsic curvature coefficients entering the expression…
Biological surfaces, such as developing epithelial tissues, exhibit in-plane polar or nematic order and can be strongly curved. Recently, integer (+1) topological defects have been identified as morphogenetic hotspots in living systems.…
Turing patterns emerge from a spatially uniform state following a linear instability driven by diffusion. Features of the eventual pattern (stabilized by non-linearities) are already present in the initial unstable modes. On a uniform flat…
Deconfined criticality and gapless topological states have recently attracted growing attention, as both phenomena go beyond the traditional Landau paradigm. However, the deep connection between these two critical states, particularly in…
When a nematic liquid crystal is confined in a porous medium with strong anchoring conditions, topological defects, called disclinations, are stably formed with numerous possible configurations. Since the energy barriers between them are…
Robust states emerging at the boundary of a system constitute a hallmark for topological band structures. Other than in closed systems, topologically protected states can occur even in systems with a trivial band structure, if exposed to…
Topological defects are singularities within a field that cannot be removed by continuous transformations. The definition of these irregularities requires an ordered reference configuration, calling into question whether they exist in…
Flat sheets encoded with patterns of contraction/elongation morph into curved surfaces. If the surfaces bear Gauss curvature, the resulting actuation can be strong and powerful. We deploy the Gauss-Bonnet theorem to deduce the Gauss…
In this paper the evolution of a binary mixture in a thin-film geometry with a wall at the top and bottom is considered. By bringing the mixture into its miscibility gap so that no spinodal decomposition occurs in the bulk, a slight…
We present new exact solutions for two-dimensional geometries generated by continuous distributions of topological defects within a conformal metric framework. By reformulating Einstein's equations in two dimensions as a Poisson equation…
A two-dimensional or quasi-two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal refers to a surface confined system. When such a system is further confined by external line boundaries or excluded from internal line boundaries, the nematic directors form…
Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…
Topological insulators as new type of quantum matter materials are characterized by a full insulating gap in the bulk and gapless edge/surface states which are protected by time-reversal symmetry. We propose the interference patterns caused…