Related papers: Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Liquid Crystals
"Fluid polyamorphism" is the existence of different condensed amorphous states in a single-component fluid. It is either found or predicted, usually at extreme conditions, for a broad group of very different substances, including helium,…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
The slow flow of amorphous solids exhibits striking heterogeneities: swift localised particle rearrangements take place in the midst of a more or less homogeneously deforming medium. Recently, experimental as well as numerical work has…
Chromonic liquid crystals (CLCs) are lyotropic materials which are attracting growing interest for their adaptability to living systems. A considerable body of works has been devoted to exploring their properties and applications. In this…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
Although coarse-grained models have been widely used to explain exotic phenomena in complex fluids, such as droplet formation in living cells, these conventional approaches often fail to capture the intricate microscopic degrees of freedom…
We derive a phase diagram for amorphous solids and liquid supercooled water and explain why the amorphous solids of water exist in several different forms. Application of large-deviation theory allows us to prepare such phases in computer…
Anisotropic fluids appear in a diverse array of systems, from liquid-crystal displays to bacterial swarms, and are characterized by orientational order. Large colloidal particles immersed in such environments disturb the medium's…
An overview of the behavior of materials at high pressure is presented, starting from the effects on single atoms driving electronic transitions and changes in periodic trends. A range of high-pressure-induced phenomena in the solid state…
We introduce structural heterogeneity, a new topological characteristic for semi-ordered materials that captures their degree of organisation at a mesoscopic level and tracks their time-evolution, ultimately detecting the order-disorder…
Mixtures of quantum fluids, that is gases or liquids, are considered with the emphasis on the conditions characterizing the stability of the mixtures. The mixtures, that can be formed by cold atoms or molecules, are assumed to be quantum…
Colloids are abundant in nature, science and technology, with examples ranging from milk to quantum dots and the "colloidal atom" paradigm. Similarly, liquid crystal ordering is important in contexts ranging from biological membranes to…
Turbulence is a widely observed state of fluid flows, characterized by complex, nonlinear interactions between motions across a broad spectrum of length and time scales. While turbulence is ubiquitous, from teacups to planetary atmospheres,…
These notes are for the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Insitutue on "Scale Invariance, Interfaces, and Non--Equilibrium Dynamics", held at the Isaac Newton Institute, 20--30 June 1994. The four lectures address a number of issues…
The observation recently of 12-fold quasicrystals in polymers, nanoparticle mixture and 12-fold and 18-fold quasicrystals in colloidal solutions are important events for the study of quasicrystals. To describe the mechanical behaviour we…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
Disordered hyperuniform structures are an exotic state of matter having suppressed density fluctuations at large length-scale similar to perfect crystals and quasicrystals but without any long range orientational order. In the past decade,…
Liquid crystal is a typical kind of soft matter that is intermediate between crystalline solids and isotropic fluids. The study of liquid crystals has made tremendous progress over the last four decades, which is of great importance on both…
Recent studies of the phase diagram for spherical, purely repulsive, active particles established the existence of a transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like phase analogous to the one observed in colloidal systems at thermal…
We analyze an analog of the hydrodynamic Rayleigh-Taylor instability for the liquid-solid phase interface under non-uniform growth of the solid phase. The development of the instability starts on conditions of an accelerated interface…