Related papers: Smectic Order in Double-Twist Cylinders
A unidirectional "density" wave order in an otherwise isotropic environment is guaranteed to display a smecticlike Goldstone mode. Examples of such "soft" states include conventional smectic liquid crystals, putative…
Smectic liquid crystals are remarkable, beautiful examples of materials microstructure, with ordered patterns of geometrically perfect ellipses and hyperbolas. The solution of the complex problem of filling three-dimensional space with…
Electronic tunability in crystals with weakly-bound layers can be achieved through layer stacking order. One such example is MoTe$_2$, where the low-temperature orthorhombic T$_d$ phase is topological and host to Weyl quasiparticles. The…
In this study, we demonstrate that when a ferroelectric nematic is confined between two glass plates coated with ionic polymers, a modulated phase emerges in a narrow temperature range between the nematic and ferroelectric nematic phases.…
Double-well optical lattices are considered, each cite of which is formed by a double-well potential. The lattice is assumed to be in an insulating state and order and disorder are defined with respect to the displacement of atoms inside…
Using density-functional theory, we have analyzed the phase behavior of binary mixtures of hard rods of different lengths and diameters. Previous studies have shown a strong tendency of smectic phases of these mixtures to segregate and, in…
Surface-induced liquid crystalline phase transitions evoke fundamental interest and can provide deeper insight into the nature of low-dimensional phase transitions. Board-like conjugated polymers are particularly interesting because they…
We consider the weakly first order phase transition between the isotropic and ordered phases of nematics in terms of the behavior of topological line defects. Analytical and Monte Carlo results are presented for a new coarse-grained lattice…
We demonstrate that the occurrence of symmetry breaking phase transitions together with the emergence of a local order parameter in classical statistical physics is a consequence of the geometrical structure of probability space. To this…
It has been observed experimentally that the actin gel grown from spherical beads coated with polymerization enzymes spontaneously breaks the symmetry of its spherical shape, and yields a ``comet'' pushing the bead forward. We propose a…
Structural studies by synchrotron x-ray diffraction on two main-chain smectic-C elastomers reveal the presence of two different relaxation mechanisms in these systems at low and high strains. At low strains, the smectic layers are…
The nematic-superconductor state is an example of a quantum liquid crystal that breaks gauge as well as rotation invariance. It was conjectured to exist in the pseudogap regime of the cuprates high $T_c$ superconductors. The…
Motivated by recent reports of nematic order in twisted bilayer graphene (TBG), we investigate the impact of the triangular moir\'e superlattice degrees of freedom on nematicity. In TBG, the nematic order parameter is not Ising-like, as it…
We show that a suspension of non-interacting deformable particles subjected to an oscillatory shear flow leads to development of nematic order that arises from the phenomenon of phase synchronization. The synchronized state corresponds to a…
We investigate numerically the finite-temperature phase diagrams of the extended Bose-Hubbard model in a two-dimensional square lattice. In particular, we focus on the melting of supersolid phases of two different crystal orderings, stripe…
Defying the conventional wisdom regarding first--order transitions, {\it solid--solid displacive transformations} are often accompanied by pronounced pretransitional phenomena. Generally, these phenomena are indicative of some mesoscopic…
Gyroscopic metamaterials --- mechanical structures composed of interacting spinning tops --- have recently been found to support one-way topological edge excitations. In these structures, the time reversal symmetry breaking that enables…
Interesting emergent behavior in quantum materials arises when the interaction of electrons with the lattice leads to partial localization and ordering of charge at low temperatures. The triangular lattice of some transition metal…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking and emergent polar order are each of fundamental importance to a range of scientific disciplines, as well as generating rich phase behaviour in liquid crystals (LCs). Here, we show the union of these phenomena…
Atomic or molecular bosons in harmonically confined optical lattices exhibit a wedding cake structure consisting of insulating (Mott) shells. It is shown that superfluid regions emerge between Mott shells as a result of fluctuations due to…