Related papers: Entropically Driven Helix Formation
We compare two calculations of the particle density in the superfluid phase of the classical XY model with a chemical potential $\mu$ in 1+1 dimensions.The first relies on exact blocking formulas from the Tensor Renormalization Group (TRG)…
We present a scaled particle density functional study of two-dimensional binary mixtures of hard convex particles with one or both species being ellipses. In particular, we divide our study into two parts. The first part is devoted to the…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
This thesis can be divided into two independent parts. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on studying the kinetic pathways of nucleation in colloidal systems. In Chapter 2, we briefly introduce the relevant theory of nucleation,…
Helically coiled filaments are a frequent motif in nature. In situations commonly encountered in experiments coiled helices are squeezed flat onto two dimensional surfaces. Under such 2-D confinement helices form "squeelices" - peculiar…
The generic crease set of an event horizon possesses anisotropic structure though most of black holes are dynamically stable. This fact suggests that a generic almost spherical black hole has a very crumpled crease set in a microscopic…
Swimming microorganisms often have to propel in complex, non-Newtonian fluids. We carry out experiments with self-propelling helical swimmers driven by an externally rotating magnetic field in shear-thinning, inelastic fluids. Similarly to…
Motivated by the organization of crosslinked cytoskeletal biopolymers, we present a semimicroscopic replica field theory for the formation of anisotropic random networks of semiflexible polymers. The networks are formed by introducing…
The entropic effects of anchored polymers on biomembranes are studied using simulations of a meshless membrane model combined with anchored linear polymer chains. The bending rigidity and spontaneous curvature are investigated for anchored…
The assembly of molecular networks into structures such as random tilings and glasses has recently been demonstrated for a number of two-dimensional systems. These structures are dynamically-arrested on experimental timescales so the…
We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…
We study experimentally a coiling instability of cylindrical multilamellar stacks of phospholipid membranes, induced by polymers with hydrophobic anchors grafted along their hydrophilic backbone. We interpret our experimental results in…
A thermophysical model was developed to test the viability of 57 candidate hollow-forming volatiles within the hollow-formation model framework of Blewett et al. (2013). We find that the thermophysical properties of elemental sulfur (S)…
The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…
The (measure-theoretical) entropy of a diffeomorphism along an expanding invariant foliation is the rate of complexity generated by the diffeomorphism along the leaves of the foliation. We prove that this number varies upper…
Macromolecular solubility in solvent mixtures often exhibit striking and paradoxical nature. For example, when two well miscible poor solvents for a given polymer are mixed together, the same polymer may swell within intermediate mixing…
Hard-sphere models exhibit many of the same kinds of supercooled-liquid behavior as more realistic models of liquids, but the highly non-analytic character of their potentials makes it a challenge to think of that behavior in…
A simple model of spacetime foam, made by N wormholes in a semiclassical approximation, is taken under examination. We show that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is here ``quantized'' in agreement with the heuristic calculation of Bekenstein.
Motivated to understand the behavior of biological filaments interacting with membranes of various types, we study a theoretical model for the shape and thermodynamics of intrinsically-helical filaments bound to curved membranes. We show…
A theoretical model of electromigrative, diffusive and convectivetransport polymer-gel composites is presented. Bulk properties are derived from the standard electrokinetic model with an impenetrable charged sphere embedded in an…