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Knotted nematic disclinations in liquid crystals stabilized by chirality and confinement

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Speaker: Slobodan Žumer, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana & Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Related Webpage: http://softmatter.fmf.uni-lj.si/main.php?page=memb
Location: 2112 Mathematical Sciences Building (MSB)
Start time: Fri, Feb 3 2017, 3:10PM

Knotted fields is a research topic relevant to different areas of physics where topology plays a crucial role. The stabilization of knots depends on the interplay of the confining geometry, surface anchoring, and intrinsic chirality. In this seminar, I will first describe the realization of knotted nematic disclinations that are stabilized by colloidal particles in nematic liquid crystals. Further, the predictions of free-standing knotted nematic disclination loops in the cholesteric liquid crystal confined to spherical droplets will be analyzed.

S. Čopar, U. Tkalec, I. Muševič, and S. Žumer, Knot theory realizations in nematic colloids, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 112, 1675 (2015).
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/6/1675.full

D. Seč, S. Čopar, and S. Žumer, Topological zoo of free‐standing knots in confined chiral nematic fluids, Nature Communications 5, 3057 (2014).

Martinez, M. Ravnik, B. Lucero, R. Visvanathan, S. Žumer, and I. I. Smalyukh, Mutually tangled colloidal knots and induced defect loops in nematic fields, Nature Materials 13, 258 (2014).



Contact Mariel Vazquez at mariel@math.ucdavis.edu if you want to meet with the speaker.