Related papers: Electro-Mechanical Fredericks Effects in Nematic G…
We investigate the effects of electric double layers and flexoelectricity on the surface anchoring in general nematic fluids. Within a simplified model, we demonstrate for a nematic electrolyte how the surface anchoring strength can be…
Molecules of a nematic liquid crystal respond to an applied magnetic field by reorienting themselves in the direction of the field. Since the dielectric anisotropy of a nematic is small, it takes relatively large fields to elicit a…
Motivated by recent experimental observations [U. Delabre et al, Langmuir 24, 3998, 2008] we reconsider an instability of ultrathin nematic films, spread on liquid substrates. Within a continuum elastic theory of liquid crystals, in the…
Recently Biscari, DiCarlo and Turzi ["Anisotropic wave propagation in nematic liquid crystals", to appear (arXiv:1311.1802)] proposed a theory for nematoacustics which models nematic liquid crystals as nematic elastomers with molecular…
We study the formation of an electronic nematic phase characterized by a broken point-group symmetry in interacting fermion systems within the weak coupling theory. As a function of interaction strength and chemical potential, the phase…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit a fast optical response when the applied electric field modifies the degree of order but does not change the direction of molecular orientation. The effect requires a relatively high electric field, on the…
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…
Elliptic shear applied to a homeotropically oriented nematic above the electric bend Freedericks transition (FT) generates slow precession of the director. The character of the accompanying nonlinear waves changes from diffusive phase waves…
Liquid crystal droplets are of great interest from physics and applications. Rigorous mathematical analysis is challenging as the problem involves harmonic maps (and in general the Oseen-Frank model), free interfaces and topological defects…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
The effect of confinement on the orientational structure of a nematic liquid crystal model has been investigated by using a version of density-functional theory (DFT). We have focused on the case of a nematic confined by opposing flat…
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…
Within the macroscopic Landau-de Gennes approach, we examine the Gaussian normal mode fluctuations of semi-infinite nematic liquid crystals in a regime of critical wetting. It is argued that surface free-energy potentials that strongly…
Electronic nematicity in Fe-based superconductors is manifested by spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking and the formation of nematic domains with mutually orthogonal directions of $d_{xz}$/$d_{yz}$ orbital anisotropy. However, its…
A critical end point above which an isotropic phase continuously evolves into a polar (ferroelectric) nematic phase with an increasing electric field is found in a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline material. The critical end point is…
Much is known about the Freedericksz transition induced by uniform electric and magnetic fields in nematic liquid crystals. Here we study the effects of a spatially varying field on the transition. We study the response of a nematic to a…
Dielectric relaxation of materials provides important information on the polarisation dynamics at different time scales. We study the dielectric relaxation of a nematic liquid crystal under steady rotational shear and simultaneously measure…
We present the first experimental measurements of the isotropic and nematic phases of mixtures of thin, charged semiflexible fd virus, and thick, fd-PEG created by covalently grafting poly-(ethylene glycol) to the the surface of fd, rods.…
Activity in nematics drives interfacial flows that lead to preferential alignment that is tangential or planar for extensile systems (pushers) and perpendicular or homeotropic for contractile ones (pullers). This alignment is known as…
Within the framework of Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals, we study the temperature-induced isotropic-nematic phase transition on a spherical shell. Below a critical temperature, a thin layer of nematic coating a…