A mean field theory is presented to describe cholesteric phases in mixtures of a polymer and a cholesteric liquid crystal. Taking into account an anisotropic coupling between a polymer and a liquid crystal, we examine the helical pitch, twist elastic constant, and phase separations. Analytical expressions of the helical pitch of a cholesteric phase and the twist elastic constant are derived as ...

We present measurements and calculations of the terahertz (THz) electric field measured in the near field of a metal tip used in THz apertureless near-field optical microscopy (THz-ANSOM). An analytical model in which we treat the metal tip as a linear wire antenna allows us to predict almost all of the features observed in the measurements, such as the relatively slow decay of the near-field a...

We numerically study many-body interactions among colloidal particles suspended in a nematic liquid crystal, using a fluid particle dynamics method, which properly incorporates dynamical coupling among particles, nematic orientation, and flow field. Based on simulation results, we propose a new type of interparticle interaction in addition to well-known quadrupolar interaction for particles acc...

We describe the synthesis of hybrid magnetic ellipsoidal nanoparticles that consist of a mixture of two different iron oxide phases, hematite (α-Fe2O3) and maghemite (γ-Fe2O3), and characterize their magnetic field-driven self-assembly. We demonstrate that the relative amount of the two phases can be adjusted in a continuous way by varying the reaction time during the synthesis, leading to stro...

A study was performed on the growth interface of a large-diameter 1 at% neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) single crystal grown using Czochralski method. Red parallel light and an orthogonal polarizing system were used to observe distribution central lateral cores at different interfaces. The solid–liquid Nd:YAG mainly determined via interaction between natural forced convection. ...

This tutorial review covers recent progress in the field of computer simulation of liquid crystals. The development of the main "molecular-based" models for liquid crystals is described. These include lattice models, coarse-grained single site models based on hard and soft interaction potentials, atomistic models and multi-site coarse-grained models. A brief historical review is followed by an ...

We present measurements of the magnetic susceptibility, heat capacity and electrical resistivity of Pu1−xLuxPd3, with x=0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8 and 1. PuPd3 is an antiferromagnetic heavy fermion compound with TN = 24 K. With increasing Lu doping, both the Kondo and RKKY interaction strengths fall, as judged by the Sommerfeld coefficient γ and Néel temperature TN . Fits to a crystal field model of...

Polymer self-consistent field theory of the Edwards-Helfand kind is the state-of-the-art method for predicting the morphologies of block copolymer materials. The methodology of block copolymer self-consistent field theory is transported to classical density functional theory such that a wide range of self-consistent field theory tools can be applied to completely nonpolymeric materials, such as...