Related papers: Light-induced multistability and Freedericksz tran…
Mono-layers of stearic and behenic acids and mixtures of them in different proportions, deposited with the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, were used to study the alignment and the alignment dynamics in nematic liquid crystal cells. A…
We report curling self-propulsion in aqueous emulsions of common mesogenic compounds. Nematic liquid crystal droplets self-propel in a surfactant solution with concentrations above the critical micelle concentration while undergoing…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
We investigated the effect of a photovoltaic field generated on the surface of iron-doped lithium niobate crystals on droplets of a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline and a standard nematic liquid crystalline material deposited on…
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…
The origin of nonlinear responses in cells has been suggested to be crucial for various cell functions including the propagation of the nervous impulse. In physics nonlinear behavior often originates from phase transitions. Evidence for…
Due to the intertwining between electronic nematic and elastic degrees of freedom, lattice defects and structural inhomogeneities commonly found in crystals can have a significant impact on the electronic properties of nematic materials.…
Strong metastability and history dependence are observed in DC and pulsed transport studies of flux-line lattices in 2H-$NbSe_{2}$, leading to the identification of two distinct states of the lattice with different spatial ordering. The…
Nematic liquid crystal (LC) molecules adsorbed on two dimensional materials are aligned along the crystal directions of the hexagonal lattice. It was demonstrated that short electric pulses can reorient the aligned LC molecules in the…
We present a microscopic theory for ultrafast control of solids with high-intensity terahertz frequency optical pulses. When resonant with selected infrared-active vibrations, these pulses transiently modify the crystal structure and lead…
Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…
Multistability -- the emergence of multiple stable states under identical conditions -- is a hallmark of nonlinear complexity and an enabling mechanism for multilevel optical memory and photonic computing. Its realization in a compact…
It is known that the doping of liquid crystal with dyes usually changes the physical properties of the host, like the transition temperatures and the optical absorption among others. In this work we report a study of the nonlinear optical…
Active liquid crystals or active gels are soft materials which can be physically realised e.g. by preparing a solution of cytoskeletal filaments interacting with molecular motors. We study the hydrodynamics of an active liquid crystal in a…
Simulations of nematic-isotropic transition of liquid crystals in two dimensions are performed using an O(2) vector model characterised by non linear nearest neighbour spin interaction governed by the fourth Legendre polynomial $P\_4$. The…
One objective of active matter science is to unveil principles by which chaotic microscale dynamics could be transformed into useful work. A nematic liquid crystal environment offers a number of possibilities, one of which is a directional…
Compared to isotropic liquids, orientational order of nematic liquid crystals makes their rheological properties more involved, and thus requires fine control of the flow parameters to govern the orientational patterns. In microfluidic…
We use numerical simulation to examine the possibility of a reversible liquid-liquid transition in supercooled water and related systems. In particular, for two atomistic models of water, we have computed free energies as functions of…
We present a general theory of liquid crystals under inhomogeneous electric field in a Ginzburg-Landau scheme. The molecular orientation can be deformed by electric field when the dielectric tensor is orientation-dependent. We then…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…