Related papers: Mean-Field Nematic--Smectic-{\sl A} Transition in …
Experimental and modeling/simulation studies of phase equilibrium and growth morphologies of novel polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) mixtures of PS (polystyrene) and liquid crystals that exhibit a direct isotropic/smectic-A (lamellar)…
We have structurally characterized the liquid crystal phase that appears as an intermediate state when a dielectric nematic, having polar disorder of its molecular dipoles, transitions to the almost perfectly polar-ordered ferroelectric…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
In this article, we construct and analyze models of anisotropic crosslinked polymers employing tools from the theory of liquid crystal elastomers. The anisotropy of these systems stems from the presence of rigid-rod molecular units in the…
In twist-bend nematic (N\textsubscript{TB}) liquid crystals (LCs), the mean molecular orientation exhibits heliconical structure with nanoscale periodicity. On the mesoscopic scale, N\textsubscript{TB} resembles layered systems (like…
A system that possesses translational symmetry but breaks orientational symmetry is known as a nematic phase. While there are many examples of nematic phases in a wide range of contexts, such as in liquid crystals, complex oxides, and…
Nematic elastomers are a particular class of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) that exhibit both liquid-crystalline order and rubber (entropic) elasticity. This combination makes them stimuli-responsive soft materials with a number of…
The critical behavior at the transition from uniform nematic to twist-bend modulated nematic phase is revealed and shown to be well explained by the mean field approximation. The study was performed on a group of materials that exhibit an…
We report on the alignment transition of a nematic liquid crystal from initially homeotropic to quasi-planar due to field-induced anchoring breaking. The initial homeotropic alignment is achieved by Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers. In this…
At the A to C transition, smectic elastomers have recently been observed to undergo $\sim$35% spontaneous shear strains. We first explicitly describe how strains of up to twice this value could be mechanically or electrically induced in…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
In many high temperature superconductors, small orthorhombic distortions of the lattice structure result in surprisingly large symmetry breaking of the electronic states and macroscopic properties, an effect often referred to as nematicity.…
Modeling and simulation studies using a high-order Landau-de Gennes type model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystal transition are presented showing the existence of meta-stable nematic pre-ordering under certain conditions, in…
We study theoretically the effect of an external field on the nematic-smectic-A (NA) transition close to the tricritical point, where fluctuation effects govern the qualitative behavior of the transition. An external field suppresses…
We perform exact Statistical Mechanics calculations for a system of elongated objects (hard needles) that are restricted to translate along a line and rotate within a plane, and that interact via both excluded-volume steric repulsion and…
Randomly crosslinked macromolecules undergo a liquid-to-amorphous solid phase transition at a critical crosslink concentration. This transition has two main signatures: the random localization of a fraction of the monomers and the emergence…
We present a self-consistent field theory (SCFT) of semiflexible (wormlike) diblock copolymers, each consisting of a rigid and a flexible part. The segments of the polymers are otherwise identical, in particular with regard to their…
The reorientation behaviour of a smectic-A (SmA) elastomer deformed parallel to the smectic layer normal has been interpreted as a Sm-C like transition by Stenull and Lubensky. Experiments, however, prove that such a transition does not…
Understanding superconductivity requires detailed knowledge of the normal electronic state from which it emerges. A nematic electronic state that breaks the rotational symmetry of the lattice can potentially promote unique scattering…
The defining property of electronic nematicity -- the spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry -- implies an unavoidable coupling between the nematic order parameter and elastic strain fields, known as nemato-elasticity. While both…