相关论文: The Geometry of the Cholesteric Phase

We explore reshaping of nematoelastic films upon imbibing an isotropic solvent under conditions when isotropic and nematic phases coexist. The structure of the interphase boundary is computed taken into account the optimal nematic…

The phase behaviour of colloidal dispersions is interesting for fundamental reasons and for technological applications such as photonic crystals and electronic paper. Sedimentation, which in everyday life is relevant from blood analysis to…

We study the geometric phase factors underlying the classical and the corresponding quantum dynamics of a driven nonlinear oscillator exhibiting chaotic dynamics. For the classical problem, we compute the geometric phase factors associated…

Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…

We carry out Monte Carlo simulations on fluid membranes with orientational order and multiple edges in the presence and absence of external forces. The membrane resists bending and has an edge tension, the orientational order couples with…

We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…

Using particle-resolved molecular-dynamics simulations, we compute the phase diagram for soft repulsive spherocylinders confined on the surface of a sphere. While crystal (K), smectic (Sm), and isotropic (I) phases exhibit a stability…

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 investigate similarities in the micro-structural dynamics between externally driven and actively driven nematics. Walls, lines of strong deformations in the director field, and topological defects are characteristic features of an active…

The interface of a cholesteric liquid crystal with an isotropic fluid can display a range of unusual properties, such as a layer of topological defects close to an undulated interface. These properties have been know for a long time and…

We demonstrate how to construct dynamic phase diagrams for complex fluids that undergo transitions under flow, in which the conserved composition variable and the broken-symmetry order parameter (nematic, smectic, crystalline, etc.) are…

Elastic constants of splay K_11, twist K_22, and bend K_33 of nematic liquid crystals are often assumed to be equal to each other in order to simplify the theoretical description of complex director fields. Here we present examples of how…

A state of matter in which molecules show a long-range orientational order and no positional order is called a nematic liquid crystal. The best known and most widely used (for example, in modern displays) is the uniaxial nematic, with the…

Thermotropic biaxial nematic phases seem to be rare, but biaxial smectic A phases less so. Here we use molecular field theory to study a simple two-parameter model, with one parameter promoting a biaxial phase and the second promoting…

Using a kinematic approach we show that the non-adiabatic, non-cyclic, geometric phase corresponding to the radiation emitted by a three level cascade system provides a sensitive diagnostic tool for determining the entanglement properties…

Using tools and concepts from contact topology we show that non-vanishing twist implies conservation of the layer structure in cholesteric liquid crystals. This leads to a number of additional topological invariants for cholesteric…

The uniform director field obtained for the nematic ground state of the hard-rod model of liquid crystals in two dimensions reflects the high symmetry of the constituents of the liquid; It is a manifestation of the constituents' local…

Within the framework of continuum theory, we draw a parallel between ferromagnetic materials and nematic liquid crystals confined on curved surfaces, which are both characterized by local interaction and anchoring potentials. We show that…

We numerically investigate two-dimensional systems of hard rectangles at constant pressure through extensive hard-particle Monte Carlo simulations. We determine the complete phase diagram as a function of packing fraction and aspect ratio,…

We investigate the pitch sensitivity of cholesteric phases of helicoidal patchy cylinders as a generic model for chiral (bio-)polymers and helix-shaped colloidal rods. The behaviour of the macroscopic cholesteric pitch is studied from…