scholarly journals Electronic Floquet gyro-liquid crystal

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iliya Esin ◽  
Gaurav Kumar Gupta ◽  
Erez Berg ◽  
Mark S. Rudner ◽  
Netanel H. Lindner

AbstractFloquet engineering uses coherent time-periodic drives to realize designer band structures on-demand, thus yielding a versatile approach for inducing a wide range of exotic quantum many-body phenomena. Here we show how this approach can be used to induce non-equilibrium correlated states with spontaneously broken symmetry in lightly doped semiconductors. In the presence of a resonant driving field, the system spontaneously develops quantum liquid crystalline order featuring strong anisotropy whose directionality rotates as a function of time. The phase transition occurs in the steady state of the system achieved due to the interplay between the coherent external drive, electron-electron interactions, and dissipative processes arising from the coupling to phonons and the electromagnetic environment. We obtain the phase diagram of the system using numerical calculations that match predictions obtained from a phenomenological treatment and discuss the conditions on the system and the external drive under which spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs. Our results demonstrate that coherent driving can be used to induce non-equilibrium quantum phases of matter with dynamical broken symmetry.

Author(s):  
David M. Anderson ◽  
Tomas Landh

First discovered in surfactant-water liquid crystalline systems, so-called ‘bicontinuous cubic phases’ have the property that hydropnilic and lipophilic microdomains form interpenetrating networks conforming to cubic lattices on the scale of nanometers. Later these same structures were found in star diblock copolymers, where the simultaneous continuity of elastomeric and glassy domains gives rise to unique physical properties. Today it is well-established that the symmetry and topology of such a morphology are accurately described by one of several triply-periodic minimal surfaces, and that the interface between hydrophilic and hydrophobic, or immiscible polymer, domains is described by a triply-periodic surface of constant, nonzero mean curvature. One example of such a dividing surface is shown in figure 5.The study of these structures has become of increasing importance in the past five years for two reasons:1)Bicontinuous cubic phase liquid crystals are now being polymerized to create microporous materials with monodispersed pores and readily functionalizable porewalls; figure 3 shows a TEM from a polymerized surfactant / methylmethacrylate / water cubic phase; and2)Compelling evidence has been found that these same morphologies describe biomembrane systems in a wide range of cells.


Polymer Chemistry: A Practical Approach in Chemistry has been designed for both chemists working in and new to the area of polymer synthesis. It contains detailed instructions for preparation of a wide-range of polymers by a wide variety of different techniques, and describes how this synthetic methodology can be applied to the development of new materials. It includes details of well-established techniques, e.g. chain-growth or step-growth processes together with more up-to-date examples using methods such as atom-transfer radical polymerization. Less well-known procedures are also included, e.g. electrochemical synthesis of conducting polymers and the preparation of liquid crystalline elastomers with highly ordered structures. Other topics covered include general polymerization methodology, controlled/"living" polymerization methods, the formation of cyclic oligomers during step-growth polymerization, the synthesis of conducting polymers based on heterocyclic compounds, dendrimers, the preparation of imprinted polymers and liquid crystalline polymers. The main bulk of the text is preceded by an introductory chapter detailing some of the techniques available to the scientist for the characterization of polymers, both in terms of their chemical composition and in terms of their properties as materials. The book is intended not only for the specialist in polymer chemistry, but also for the organic chemist with little experience who requires a practical introduction to the field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuyin Xi ◽  
Ronald S. Lankone ◽  
Li-Piin Sung ◽  
Yun Liu

AbstractBicontinuous porous structures through colloidal assembly realized by non-equilibrium process is crucial to various applications, including water treatment, catalysis and energy storage. However, as non-equilibrium structures are process-dependent, it is very challenging to simultaneously achieve reversibility, reproducibility, scalability, and tunability over material structures and properties. Here, a novel solvent segregation driven gel (SeedGel) is proposed and demonstrated to arrest bicontinuous structures with excellent thermal structural reversibility and reproducibility, tunable domain size, adjustable gel transition temperature, and amazing optical properties. It is achieved by trapping nanoparticles into one of the solvent domains upon the phase separation of the binary solvent. Due to the universality of the solvent driven particle phase separation, SeedGel is thus potentially a generic method for a wide range of colloidal systems.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 290
Author(s):  
Maxim Pyzh ◽  
Kevin Keiler ◽  
Simeon I. Mistakidis ◽  
Peter Schmelcher

We address the interplay of few lattice trapped bosons interacting with an impurity atom in a box potential. For the ground state, a classification is performed based on the fidelity allowing to quantify the susceptibility of the composite system to structural changes due to the intercomponent coupling. We analyze the overall response at the many-body level and contrast it to the single-particle level. By inspecting different entropy measures we capture the degree of entanglement and intraspecies correlations for a wide range of intra- and intercomponent interactions and lattice depths. We also spatially resolve the imprint of the entanglement on the one- and two-body density distributions showcasing that it accelerates the phase separation process or acts against spatial localization for repulsive and attractive intercomponent interactions, respectively. The many-body effects on the tunneling dynamics of the individual components, resulting from their counterflow, are also discussed. The tunneling period of the impurity is very sensitive to the value of the impurity-medium coupling due to its effective dressing by the few-body medium. Our work provides implications for engineering localized structures in correlated impurity settings using species selective optical potentials.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Angus J. Dunnett ◽  
Alex W. Chin

Simulating the non-perturbative and non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems is a very challenging many body problem, due to the need to evolve both the system and its environments on an equal footing. Tensor network and matrix product states (MPS) have emerged as powerful tools for open system models, but the numerical resources required to treat finite-temperature environments grow extremely rapidly and limit their applications. In this study we use time-dependent variational evolution of MPS to explore the striking theory of Tamascelli et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2019, 123, 090402.) that shows how finite-temperature open dynamics can be obtained from zero temperature, i.e., pure wave function, simulations. Using this approach, we produce a benchmark dataset for the dynamics of the Ohmic spin-boson model across a wide range of coupling strengths and temperatures, and also present a detailed analysis of the numerical costs of simulating non-equilibrium steady states, such as those emerging from the non-perturbative coupling of a qubit to baths at different temperatures. Despite ever-growing resource requirements, we find that converged non-perturbative results can be obtained, and we discuss a number of recent ideas and numerical techniques that should allow wide application of MPS to complex open quantum systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Wintermantel ◽  
M. Buchhold ◽  
S. Shevate ◽  
M. Morgado ◽  
Y. Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractWhether it be physical, biological or social processes, complex systems exhibit dynamics that are exceedingly difficult to understand or predict from underlying principles. Here we report a striking correspondence between the excitation dynamics of a laser driven gas of Rydberg atoms and the spreading of diseases, which in turn opens up a controllable platform for studying non-equilibrium dynamics on complex networks. The competition between facilitated excitation and spontaneous decay results in sub-exponential growth of the excitation number, which is empirically observed in real epidemics. Based on this we develop a quantitative microscopic susceptible-infected-susceptible model which links the growth and final excitation density to the dynamics of an emergent heterogeneous network and rare active region effects associated to an extended Griffiths phase. This provides physical insights into the nature of non-equilibrium criticality in driven many-body systems and the mechanisms leading to non-universal power-laws in the dynamics of complex systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (4) ◽  
pp. 5732-5748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Kannan ◽  
Federico Marinacci ◽  
Mark Vogelsberger ◽  
Laura V Sales ◽  
Paul Torrey ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present a novel framework to self-consistently model the effects of radiation fields, dust physics, and molecular chemistry (H2) in the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. The model combines a state-of-the-art radiation hydrodynamics module with a H  and He  non-equilibrium thermochemistry module that accounts for H2 coupled to an empirical dust formation and destruction model, all integrated into the new stellar feedback framework SMUGGLE. We test this model on high-resolution isolated Milky-Way (MW) simulations. We show that the effect of radiation feedback on galactic star formation rates is quite modest in low gas surface density galaxies like the MW. The multiphase structure of the ISM, however, is highly dependent on the strength of the interstellar radiation field. We are also able to predict the distribution of H2, that allow us to match the molecular Kennicutt–Schmidt (KS) relation, without calibrating for it. We show that the dust distribution is a complex function of density, temperature, and ionization state of the gas. Our model is also able to match the observed dust temperature distribution in the ISM. Our state-of-the-art model is well-suited for performing next-generation cosmological galaxy formation simulations, which will be able to predict a wide range of resolved (∼10 pc) properties of galaxies.


1999 ◽  
Vol 559 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.T. Mather ◽  
W. Barnes ◽  
P.J. Hood ◽  
T.J. Bunning

ABSTRACTWe present here a rheo-optical study of the flow behavior of two cholesteric liquid crystals, one with a large pitch and one with a small pitch. The large pitch compound has been investigated as a possible fixed wavelength polarizer in the mid-wavelength infra-red region (3-5 micron). The investigation of these compounds is driven by their low melt viscosity and ability to vitrify order, and thus functionality, into films with a wide range of thickness. In our attempts to obtain consistent thin films with reproducible contrast ratios, we explored the defect textures of both compounds under a polarizing optical microscope. These materials were sheared at various strain rates and at various temperatures in an attempt to determine the best processing window for defect free films. The pitch lengths of the two materials investigated were 160 and 1330 nm. The flow behavior of the large pitch material resembles a pure nematic with defect refinement taking place under flow. The short pitch material exhibited the typical Grandjean oily streaks upon shearing followed by coarsening. Observations made during this rheological study were used to identify a processing technique for the large pitch materials. Upon application of a conventional buffed alignment layer, films with consistent quality were routinely made. The measured polarization contrast of >70:1 exceeds the values obtained from state-of-the art commercial polarizers in this wavelength regime.


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