Related papers: Dipolar interactions, molecular flexibility, and f…
The stability of liquid crystal phases in presence of small amount of non-mesogenic impurities is of general interest for a large spectrum of technological applications and in the theories of binary mixtures. Starting from the known phase…
Using laser tweezers and fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we study colloidal interactions of solid microspheres in the nematic bulk caused by elastic distortions around the particles with strong tangential surface anchoring. The…
Membrane shape fluctuations induce attractive interactions between rigid inclusions. Previous analytical studies showed that the fluctuation-induced pair interactions are rather small compared to thermal energies, but also that multi-body…
Magnetic gels are soft elastic materials consisting of magnetic particles embedded in a polymer network. Their shape and elasticity can be controlled by an external magnetic field, which gives rise to both, engineering and biomedical…
The discrepancy in nucleation rate densities between simulated and experimental hard spheres remains staggering and unexplained. Suggestively, more strongly sedimenting colloidal suspensions of hard spheres nucleate much faster than weakly…
We review and compare recent work on the properties of fluctuating interfaces between nematic and isotropic liquid-crystalline phases. Molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out for systems of ellipsoids and hard…
By means of lattice-based Monte Carlo simulations, we address properties of two-component lipid membranes on the experimentally relevant spatial scales of order of a micrometer and time intervals of order of a second, using DMPC/DSPC lipid…
Explicit simulations of fluid mixtures of highly size-dispersed particles are constrained by numerical challenges associated with identifying pair-interaction neighbors. Recent algorithmic developments have ameliorated these difficulties to…
Recent advances in cold atom experimentation suggest that studies of quantum two-dimensional melting of dipolar molecules, with dipoles aligned perpendicular to ordering plane, may be on the horizon. An intriguing aspect of this problem is…
The realization of a spontaneous macroscopic ferroelectric order in fluids of anisotropic mesogens is a topic of both fundamental and technological interest. Recently, we demonstrated that a system of dipolar achiral disklike ellipsoids can…
We consider a zero-temperature one-dimensional system of bosons interacting via the soft-shoulder potential in the continuum, typical of dressed Rydberg gases. We employ quantum Monte Carlo simulations, which allow for the exact calculation…
We study mutual alignment and interactions between colloidal particles of dissimilar shapes and dimensions when dispersed in a nematic host fluid. Convex pentagonal and concave starfruit-shaped nanoprisms and microspheres induce dipolar or…
We employ the recently introduced generalized microcanonical inflection point method for the statistical analysis of phase transitions in flexible and semiflexible polymers and study the impact of the bending stiffness upon the character…
We study the effects of long-range electrostatic interactions on the thermal fluctuations of free-standing crystalline membranes exhibiting spontaneous electric polarization directed at each point along the local normal to the surface. We…
We examine, using molecular dynamics simulation, the structure and thermodynamics of the (100) and (111) disordered face-centered cubic (FCC) crystal/melt interfaces for a binary hard-sphere system. This study is an extension of our…
Hard spherocylinders (cylinders of length $L$ and diameter $D$ capped at both ends with two hemispheres) provide a suitable model for investigating entropy-driven, mesophase formations in real colloidal fluids that are composed of rigid…
Investigations of the phase diagram of biaxial liquid crystal systems through analyses of general Hamiltonian models within the simplifications of mean-field theory (MFT), as well as by computer simulations based on microscopic models, are…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…
The flow of a liquid crystal around a particle does not only depend on its shape and the viscosity coefficients but also on the direction of the molecules. We studied the resulting drag force on a sphere moving in a nematic liquid crystal…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice-polymer model that can account for both polymer crystallization and liquid-liquid demixing in solutions of semiflexible homopolymers. In our model, neighboring polymer segments can have…