Related papers: Stabilising the Blue Phases
We consider a one-dimensional variational problem arising in connection with a model for cholesteric liquid crystals. The principal feature of our study is the assumption that the twist deformation of the nematic director incurs much higher…
Ginzburg-Landau-de Gennes -type covariant theories are extensively used in connection with twist grain boundary (TGB) phases of chiral smectogens. We analyze the stability conditions for the linear, covariant elasticity theory of smectic-C…
Using the Landau-de Gennes theory, the temperature, pressure and frequency dependence of the non-linear effect in the isotropic phase above the isotropic-cholesteric phase transition is calculated. The influence of pressure on the…
The phase-field crystal equation, a parabolic, sixth-order and nonlinear partial differential equation, has generated considerable interest as a possible solution to problems arising in molecular dynamics. This is because the phase-field…
We investigate the asymptotic behaviour of a correlation function associated with a nematic liquid crystal system undergoing an isotropic-nematic phase transition following an instantaneous change of temperature. Within the setting of…
Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) have a characteristic length scale given by the pitch of the twisted stacking of their constituent rod-like molecules. Under homeotropic anchoring conditions where the molecules prefer to orient…
In a nematic gel, the appearance of nematic order is accompanied by a spontaneous elongation of the gel parallel to the nematic director. If such a gel is made chiral, it has a tendency to form a cholesteric helical texture, in which local…
Thermoelastic phenomena associated with orientational phase transition in solid C60 are considered. Coupling of the order parameter with elastic strain is analyzed in the Landau theory of phase transitions. Wide range of possible…
We study cholesteric order in liquid crystal shells with planar degenerate anchoring. We observe that the bipolar and radial configurations intensively reported for bulk droplets have a higher degree of complexity when the liquid crystal is…
Within the Landau-like approach we study anomalies of elastic moduli at phase transitions in thin films on substrates. We consider the case where, similar to many experimental cases, the first-order transition in free crystal would convert…
The ground state of twist-bend nematic liquid crystals is a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the nematic director precesses uniformly about an axis, making a fixed angle with it. Both precession senses are allowed in the ground…
Many solid materials and liquid crystals exhibit geometric frustration, meaning that they have an ideal local structure that cannot fill up space. For that reason, the global phase must be a compromise between the ideal local structure and…
Cholesteric elastomers possess a macroscopic ``phase chirality'' as the director n rotates in a helical fashion along an optical axis $z$ and can be described by a chiral order parameter. This parameter can be tuned by changing the helix…
The equilibrium phase diagram of a 1:1 symmetrical mixture composed of oppositely charged colloids is calculated using Monte Carlo simulations. We model the system by the DLVO effective interaction potential. The phase diagram is similar to…
Based on static and dynamical density functional theory, a phase-field-crystal model is derived which involves both the translational density and the orientational degree of ordering as well as a local director field. The model exhibits…
We perform a direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the forced, incompressible two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation coupled with the FENE-P equations for the polymer-conformation tensor. The forcing is such that, without polymers and at low…
We analyse the effect of thermal fluctuations on the elastic constants of the decoupled lamellar phase of tethered, crystalline membranes. Using a momentum-shell renormalization group technique, we show that the smectic-A -like…
The twist-bend nematic phase, $N_{\rm TB}$, may be viewed as a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the director $\bf n$ precesses uniformly about an extra director field, $\bf t$. It corresponds to a nematic ground state exhibiting…
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…
A Landau theory is presented for the structural transition of electrically stabilized colloidal crystals under shear. The model suggests that a structural transition from an ordered layered colloidal crystal into a disordered structure…