Related papers: A 3 - dimensionally modulated structure in a chira…
Using molecular simulations and classical density functional theory, we study the liquid-crystalline phase behaviour of a series of bent rod-like mesogens with a controlled degree of chirality introduced through a twist at the centre of the…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The colloidal rods…
We carry out Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the effect of molecular shape on liquid-crystal order. In our approach, each model mesogen consists of several soft spheres bonded rigidly together. The arrangement of the spheres may be…
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 novel continuum theory of incoherent interfaces with triple junctions is applied to study three-dimensional coupled grain boundary (GB) motion in polycrystalline materials. The kinetic relations for grain dynamics, relative sliding and…
Topological crystalline insulators (TCI) are a new class of materials which have metallic surface states on select surfaces due to point group crystalline symmetries. In this letter, we consider a model for a three-dimensional (3D)…
We demonstrate the existence of a topological chiral spin liquid in the frustrated Shastry-Sutherland Heisenberg model with an additional spin chirality interaction, using numerically unbiased exact diagonalization and density matrix…
Monodisperse suspensions of rodlike chiral $fd$ viruses are condensed into a rod-length thick colloidal monolayers of aligned rods by depletion forces. Twist deformations of the molecules are expelled to the monolayer edge as in a chiral…
Recent theoretical research has developed a general framework to understand director deformations and modulated phases in nematic liquid crystals. In this framework, there are four fundamental director deformation modes: twist, bend, splay,…
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…
We report on and analyze the textural transformations in islands, thicker circular domains, floating in very thin free standing chiral Smectic C* liquid crystal films. As an island is growing, an initial pure bend texture of the c-director…
Disclinations lines play a key role in many physical processes, from the fracture of materials to the formation of the early universe. Achieving versatile control over disclinations is key to developing novel electro-optical devices,…
We show that discotics, lying deep in the columnar phase, can exhibit an x-ray scattering pattern which mimics that of a somewhat unusual smectic liquid crystal. This exotic, new glassy phase of columnar liquid crystals, which we call a…
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)…
Grain boundaries in extremely confined colloidal smectics possess a topological fine structure with coexisting nematic and tetratic symmetry of the director field. An alternative way to approach the problem of smectic topology is via the…
We study a two-leg spin-1/2 ladder with isotropic exchanges and biquadratic interactions in the basic plaquettes. It is shown that for the extremely frustrated case, the system exhibits a self-organized phase separation. In some parameter…
Starting from Gauss and Kelvin, knots in fields were postulated behaving like particles, but experimentally they were found only as transient features or required complex boundary conditions to exist and couldn't self-assemble into…
A recent report on successful employment of the grain boundary strengthening to design extraordinarily damage-tolerant architected materials (i.e. meta-crystals) necessitates fundamental studies to understand the underlying mechanisms…
I describe recent examples of phase transitions in four-dimensional M theory vacua in which the net generation number changes. There are naive obstructions to transitions lifting chiral matter, but loopholes exist which enable us to avoid…