Related papers: Where are the Hedgehogs in Nematics?
We investigate the defect structures forming around two nanoparticles in a Gay-Berne nematic liquid crystal using molecular simulations. For small separations, disclinations entangle both particles forming the figure of eight, the figure of…
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…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
Recently, it was observed that water droplets suspended in a nematic liquid crystal form linear chains (Poulin et al., Science 275, 1770 (1997)). The chaining occurs, e.g., in a large nematic drop with homeotropic boundary conditions at all…
The possible symmetries of the biaxial nematic phase are examined against the implications of the presently available experimental results. Contrary to the widespread notion that biaxial nematics have orthorhombic symmetry, our study shows…
Defects are a ubiquitous feature of ordered media. They have certain universal features, independent of the underlying physical system, reflecting their topological origins. While the topological properties of defects are robust, they…
Active nematics are dense systems of rodlike particles that consume energy to drive motion at the level of the individual particles. They exist in natural systems like biological tissues and artificial materials such as suspensions of…
Lyotropic liquid crystals can display rich phase behaviour and self-organisation, yet the physical principles underlying their self-assembly into large scale patterns remains understudied. Here, we combine theory, simulations and…
We show that back-flow, the coupling between the order parameter and the velocity fields, has a significant effect on the motion of defects in nematic liquid crystals. In particular the defect speed can depend strongly on the topological…
Topological defects are singularities in material fields that play a vital role across a range of systems: from cosmic microwave background polarization to superconductors, and biological materials. Although topological defects and their…
Real-life bacteria often swim in complex fluids, but our understanding of the interactions between bacteria and complex surroundings is still evolving. In this work, rod-like \textit{Bacillus subtilis} swims in a quasi-2D environment with…
The influence of controlable parameters like temperature and wavelength on the trajectories of light in a nematic liquid crystal with topological defects is studied through a geometric model. The model incorporates phenomenological details…
By means of computer simulations we study how droplets of hard, rod-like particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as…
A systematic analysis of defect textures in facetted nanoparticles with polygonal configurations embedded in a nematic matrix is performed using the Landau-de Gennes model, homeotropic strong anchoring in a square domain with uniform…
Nematic colloids exhibit a large diversity of topological defects and structures induced by colloidal particles in the orientationally ordered liquid crystal host fluids. These defects and field configurations define elastic interactions…
Evidence of a special chiral nematic phase is provided using numerical simulation and Onsager theory for systems of hard helical particles. This phase appears at the high density end of the nematic phase, when helices are well aligned, and…
We calculate the interaction between two spherical colloidal particles embedded in the isotropic phase of a nematogenic liquid. The surface of the particles induces wetting nematic coronas that mediate an elastic interaction. In the weak…
Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…
Liquid crystals inevitably possess topological defect excitations generated through boundary conditions, applied fields or in quenches to the ordered phase. In equilibrium pairs of defects coarsen and annihilate as the uniform ground state…
Topological states of matter are, generally, quantum liquids of conserved topological defects. We establish this by constructing and analyzing topological field theories which describe the dynamics of field singularities using gauge fields.…