相关论文: Geometric frustration and compatibility conditions…

Physically motivated variational problems involving non-convex energies are often formulated in a discrete setting and contain boundary conditions. The long-range interactions in such problems, combined with constraints imposed by lattice…

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…

Using spin-wave theory, we show that geometric frustration fails to preserve a two-dimensional spin fluid. Even though frustration can remove the interlayer coupling in the ground-state of a classical anti-ferromagnet, spin layers…

Topological defects are a universal concept across many disciplines, such as crystallography, liquid-crystalline physics, low-temperature physics, cosmology, and even biology. In nematic liquid crystals, topological defects called…

We present a new phase-field model for binary fluids exhibiting typical signatures of self-glassiness, such as long-time relaxation, ageing and long-term dynamical arrest. The present model allows the cost of building an interface to become…

The equilibrium texture of nematic shells is studied as a function of their thickness. For ultrathin shells the ground state has four short 1/2 disclination lines but, as the thickness of the film increases, a three dimensional escaped…

Because of their spontaneous bulk polarization, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals can be easily brought by surface coupling or confinement in a state in which the accumulation of bound charges becomes incompatible with polar order,…

Disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals can exist in different geometric conformations, characterised by their director profile. In certain confined, colloidal and even more prominently in chiral nematics, the director profile may…

Crystalline structure prediction is an essential prerequisite for designing materials with targeted properties. Yet, it is still an open challenge in materials design and drug discovery. Despite recent advances in computational materials…

Placing colloidal particles in predesigned sites represents a major challenge of the current state-of-the-art colloidal science. Nematic liquid crystals with spatially varying director patterns represent a promising approach to achieve a…

We study the magnetism of a layered, spin-$\frac12$ organic-inorganic copper sulfate, which is a close realization of the star lattice antiferromagnet, one of the playgrounds of geometric frustration and resonating valence bond physics in…

Nonreciprocal interactions often create conflicting dynamical objectives that cannot be simultaneously satisfied, leading to nonreciprocal frustration. On the other hand, geometric frustration arises when conflicting static objectives in…

Predicting the alignment of non-spherical particles in dense granular flows under shear remains a central challenge in soft matter physics. We demonstrate that the first-order behavior of granular fabric,the anisotropic distribution of…

We show that surface interactions can vectorially structure the three-dimensional polariza-tion field of a ferroelectric fluid. The contact between a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal and a surface with in-plane polarity generates a…

We study topology of frustration in $d$-dimensional Ising spin glasses with $d\ge 2$ with nearest-neighbor interactions. We prove the following: For any given spin configuration, the domain walls on the unfrustration network are all…

In the context of finite elasticity, we propose plate models describing the spontaneous bending of nematic elastomer thin films due to variations along the thickness of the nematic order parameters. Reduced energy functionals are deduced…

Topological defects, which are singular points in a director field, play a major role in shaping active systems. Here, we experimentally study topological defects and the flow patterns around them, that are formed during the highly rapid…

We characterise the particlelike kinematics of charge-carrying topological defects in nematic media via a geometric field theory. This differs from the theory of electromagnetism, with which it is often compared, due to the absence of…

Ground states of materials with orientational order ranging from solid ferromagnets and ferroelectrics to liquid crystals often contain spatially varying vector-like order parameter caused by inner factors such as the shape of building…

Topological frustration (or topological mechanics) is the existence of classical zero modes that are robust to many but not all distortions of the Hamiltonian. It arises naturally from locality in systems whose interactions form a set of…