Confined liquid crystals (LC) provide a unique platform for technological applications and for the study of LC properties, such as bulk elasticity, surface anchoring, and topological defects. In this work, lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) are confined in spherical droplets, and their director configurations are investigated as a function of mesogen concentration using bright-field an...

We propose a twisted D=N=2 superspace formalism. The relation between the twisted super charges including the BRST charge, vector and pseudo scalar super charges and the N=2 spinor super charges is established. We claim that this relation is essentially related with the Dirac-Kähler fermion mechanism. We show that a fermionic bilinear form of twisted N=2 chiral and anti-chiral superfields is eq...

Detection of chiral molecules requires amplification of chirality to measurable levels. Typically, amplification mechanisms are considered at the microscopic scales of individual molecules and their aggregates. Here we demonstrate chirality amplification and visualization of structural handedness in water solutions of organic molecules that extends over the scale of many micrometers. The mechan...

Order parameters and phenomenological theory for both high- and low-symmetry biaxial nematic phases are presented and it is predicted that the chiral low-symmetry biaxial phase must be ferroelectric. This conclusion is based on general symmetry arguments and on the results of the Landau-de Gennes theory. The microscopic mechanism of the ferroelectric ordering in this chiral biaxial phase is ill...

By molecular modeling we demonstrate that the nematic long-range order discovered in bent-core liquid-crystal systems should reveal further spatially homogeneous phases. Two of them are identified as a tetrahedratic nematic (N_{T}) phase with D_{2d} symmetry and a chiral tetrahedratic nematic (N_{T};{ *}) phase with D2 symmetry. These phases were found for a lattice model with quadrupolar and o...

Recent measurements of the resistivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene near superconducting transition temperature show two-fold anisotropy, or nematicity, when changing direction an in-plane magnetic field [Cao \textit{et al.}, Science \textbf{372}, 264 (2021)]. This was interpreted as strong evidence for exotic nematic superconductivity instead widely proposed chiral superconductivity...

Spin liquid crystals are magnetic analogs of crystals, possessing properties both liquids and solids, a typical example which spin nematics. nematics share many features with liquids, the interplay between them is promising, but little explored, route to uncovering new phases matter. Here, we address this question in context spin-1 magnet on honeycomb lattice, by considering model biquadratic i...

Abstract We study minimum-energy pathways (MEPs) between the branches of metastable helical structures in chiral nematic liquid crystals (CNLCs) subjected to electric field applied across cell. By performing stability analysis we have found that, for with non-vanishing half-turn number, threshold (critical) voltage Freedericksz transition is an increasing function free twisting wave number. The...

We developed a liquid crystal LC alignment method using a molecular template of an imprinted polymer layer during polymerization-induced phase separation. Our results showed that the nematic ordering of LC is transferred to the polymer chain ordering during an anisotropic phase separation, which produces an anisotropic azimuthal surface anchoring. Using in-plane field treatment during phase sep...

We describe polarizing Ž lms formed from the lyotropic liquid crystalline phases of dyes dissolved in water. The dye polarizers possess a high dichroic ratio close to that of conventional polarizers. In addition, the dried dye Ž lms provide a uniform homogeneous orientation for thermotropic nematic materials. Therefore, thin dye Ž lms can simultaneously serve as internal polarizers and as align...