Related papers: Smectic Liquid Crystals in Random Environments
We analyze the fluctuations in particle positions and inter-particle forces in disordered jammed crystals in the limit of weak disorder. We demonstrate that such athermal systems are fundamentally different from their thermal counterparts,…
The Bragg glass phase is a nearly perfect crystal with glassy features predicted to occur in vortex lattices and charge density wave systems in the presence of disorder. Detecting it has been challenging despite its sharp theoretical…
Supercooled liquids exhibit spatial heterogeneity in the dynamics of their fluctuating atomic arrangements. The length and time scales of the heterogeneous dynamics are central to the glass transition and influence nucleation and growth of…
The effect of alternating shear orientation during cyclic loading on the relaxation dynamics in disordered solids is examined using molecular dynamics simulations. The model glass was initially prepared by rapid cooling from the liquid…
An XY model with random phase shifts as a model for a superconducting glass is studied in two and three dimensions by a zero temperature domain wall renormalization group which allows one to follow the flows of both the coupling constant…
The thermal conductivity of some orientational glasses of protonated C2H5OH and deuterated C2D5OD ethanol, cyclic substances (cyclohexanol C6H11OH, cyanocyclohexane C6H11CN, cyclohexene C6H10), and freon 112 (CFCl2)2 have been analyzed in…
The phonon scattering processes on the three solid phases of ethanol are investigated by means of thermal conductivity, light and neutron scattering measurements as well as molecular dynamics simulations on single-crystalline models for the…
We review the Random First Order Transition Theory of the glass transition, emphasizing the experimental tests of the theory. Many distinct phenomena are quantitatively predicted or explained by the theory, both above and below the glass…
In this paper, we present energy-stable numerical schemes for a Smectic-A liquid crystal model. This model involve the hydrodynamic velocity-pressure macroscopic variables $({\bf u},p)$ and the microscopic order parameter of Smectic-A…
Charged colloids can form ordered structures like Wigner crystals or glasses at very low concentrations due to long-range electrostatic repulsions. Here, we combine small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and optical experiments with…
Semiflexible polymers in concentrated lyotropic solution are studied within a bead-spring model by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on the emergence of a smectic A phase and its properties. We systematically vary the density of the…
We determine the hydrodynamic modes of the superfluid analog of a smectic-A phase in liquid crystals, i.e., a state in which both gauge invariance and translational invariance along a single direction are spontaneously broken. Such a…
We report on X-ray studies of freely suspended hexatic films of three different liquid crystal compounds. By applying angular X-ray cross-correlation analysis (XCCA) to the measured diffraction patterns the parameters of the…
Properties of disordered nematic elastomers and gels are theoretically investigated with emphasis on the roles of non-local elastic interactions and crosslinking conditions. Networks originally crosslinked in the isotropic phase lose their…
Coherent scattering of light from ultracold atoms involves an exchange of energy and momentum introducing a wealth of non-linear dynamical phenomena. As a prominent example particles can spontaneously form stationary periodic configurations…
We use molecular-dynamics computer simulations to study the translational and reorientational dynamics of a glass-forming liquid of dumbbells. For sufficiently elongated molecules the standard strong steric hindrance scenario for the…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
The effect of short chain grafting on the liquid crystalline (LC) ordering of nano-crystals is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained grafted nano-rod model. Monodisperse nano-rods, with aspect ratios typical…
A universal phase diagram for weakly pinned low-T$_c$ type-II superconductors is revisited and extended with new proposals. The low-temperature ``Bragg glass'' phase is argued to transform first into a disordered, glassy phase upon heating.…
We have considered the dynamical evolution of cellular patterns controlled by a stochastic Glauber process determined by the deviations of local cell topology from that of a crystalline structure. Above a critical temperature evolution is…