Related papers: Triply-Periodic Smectics
The atomistic structure and energetics of the Sigma 13 (10-14)[1-210] symmetrical tilt grain boundary in alpha-Al2O3 are studied by first-principles calculations based on the local-density-functional theory with a mixed-basis…
Systematic microstructure design requires reliable thermodynamic descriptions of each and all microstructure elements. While such descriptions are well established for most bulk phases, thermodynamic assessment of crystal defects is…
Given recipe of qualitative, kinetic modelling by geometric methods of three-dimensional dendritic crystals. Characteristic features of the perturbations appearing on the surface of a spherical body, leading to different scenarios of the…
Ferroelectric nematic (NF) phase and related polar liquid-crystalline phases form a new class of strongly polarized yet fluid soft matter. Well-recognized heliconical ferroelectric phases such as NTBF and SmC_P^H exist, but their…
We analyze a mean-field model of electrons with pure forward scattering interactions on a square lattice which exhibits spontaneous Fermi surface symmetry breaking with a d-wave order parameter: the surface expands along the kx-axis and…
We describe the geometry of bend distortions in twist-bend nematic liquid crystals in terms of their fundamental degeneracies, which we call $\beta$ lines. These represent a new class of line-like topological defect. We use them to…
Understanding the material parameters that control the superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ is a problem of fundamental importance. In many novel superconductors, phase fluctuations determine $T_c$, rather than the collapse of the…
Synthetic driving force molecular dynamics simulations were utilized to survey grain boundary mobility in three classes of incoherent {\Sigma}3 twin boundaries: <112>, <110>, and <111> tilt boundaries. These boundaries are faceted on low…
A ternary liquid crystalline mixture was designed to obtain a tilted hexatic smectic phase in the glassy state. Structural, electro-optic, and dielectric properties of the mixture are investigated, and selected measurements are also…
A flux liquid can condense into a smectic crystal in a pure layered superconductors with the magnetic field oriented nearly parallel to the layers. If the smectic order is commensurate with the layering, this crystal is {\sl stable} to…
This paper provides a pedagogical introduction to recent developments in geometrical and topological band theory following the discovery of graphene and topological insulators. Amusingly, many of these developments have a connection to…
We explore the smectic liquid crystal order in a cell with a "dirty" substrate imposing random pinnings. Within harmonic elasticity we find a subtle three-dimensional surface disorder-driven transition into a pinned smectic-glass,…
Many technologically useful materials are polycrystals composed of a myriad of small monocrystalline grains separated by grain boundaries. Dynamics of grain boundaries play an essential role in defining the materials properties across…
SrTiO$_3$ thin films were used as a model system to study the effects of strain and epitaxial constraint on structural phase transitions of perovskite films. The basic phenomena revealed will apply to a variety of important structural…
We investigate the formation of polycrystalline structures in a class of particle systems. The atomistic energy is modeled as a sum of particle energies that favor atoms being locally isometric to a reference lattice. The discrete frame…
We present a model for smectic elastomer membranes which includes elastic and liquid crystalline degrees of freedom. Based on our model, we determined the qualitative phase diagram of a smectic elastomer membrane using mean-field theory.…
Confined samples of liquid crystals are characterized by a variety of topological defects and can be exposed to external constraints such as extreme confinements with nontrivial topology. Here we explore the intrinsic structure of smectic…
An exact calculation of the phase diagram for a loop gas model on the brickwork lattice is presented. The model includes a bending energy. In the dense limit, where all the lattice sites are occupied, a phase transition occuring at an…
In recent work we revisited the phase diagram of hard ellipsoids of revolution (spheroids) by means of replica exchange Monte Carlo simulations. This was done by setting random initial configurations, and allows to confirm the formation of…
The topological properties of the bulk band structure of a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) manifest themselves in the form of metallic surface states. In this paper, we propose a probe which directly couples to an exotic…