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Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons

Metastable configurations formed by defects, inclusions, elastic deformations and topological solitons in liquid crystals are a promising choice for building photonic crystals and metamaterials with a potential for new optical applications. Local optical modification of the director or introduction...

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Autores principales: Porenta, T., Čopar, S., Ackerman, P. J., Pandey, M. B., Varney, M. C. M., Smalyukh, I. I., Žumer, S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4256655/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25477195
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep07337
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author Porenta, T.
Čopar, S.
Ackerman, P. J.
Pandey, M. B.
Varney, M. C. M.
Smalyukh, I. I.
Žumer, S.
author_facet Porenta, T.
Čopar, S.
Ackerman, P. J.
Pandey, M. B.
Varney, M. C. M.
Smalyukh, I. I.
Žumer, S.
author_sort Porenta, T.
collection PubMed
description Metastable configurations formed by defects, inclusions, elastic deformations and topological solitons in liquid crystals are a promising choice for building photonic crystals and metamaterials with a potential for new optical applications. Local optical modification of the director or introduction of colloidal inclusions into a moderately chiral nematic liquid crystal confined to a homeotropic cell creates localized multistable chiral solitons. Here we induce solitons that “dress” the dispersed spherical particles treated for tangential degenerate boundary conditions, and perform controlled switching of their state using focused optical beams. Two optically switchable distinct metastable states, toron and hopfion, bound to colloidal spheres into structures with different topological charges are investigated. Their structures are examined using Q-tensor based numerical simulations and compared to the profiles reconstructed from the experiments. A topological explanation of observed multistability is constructed.
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spelling pubmed-42566552014-12-08 Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons Porenta, T. Čopar, S. Ackerman, P. J. Pandey, M. B. Varney, M. C. M. Smalyukh, I. I. Žumer, S. Sci Rep Article Metastable configurations formed by defects, inclusions, elastic deformations and topological solitons in liquid crystals are a promising choice for building photonic crystals and metamaterials with a potential for new optical applications. Local optical modification of the director or introduction of colloidal inclusions into a moderately chiral nematic liquid crystal confined to a homeotropic cell creates localized multistable chiral solitons. Here we induce solitons that “dress” the dispersed spherical particles treated for tangential degenerate boundary conditions, and perform controlled switching of their state using focused optical beams. Two optically switchable distinct metastable states, toron and hopfion, bound to colloidal spheres into structures with different topological charges are investigated. Their structures are examined using Q-tensor based numerical simulations and compared to the profiles reconstructed from the experiments. A topological explanation of observed multistability is constructed. Nature Publishing Group 2014-12-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4256655/ /pubmed/25477195 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep07337 Text en Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Porenta, T.
Čopar, S.
Ackerman, P. J.
Pandey, M. B.
Varney, M. C. M.
Smalyukh, I. I.
Žumer, S.
Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons
title Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons
title_full Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons
title_fullStr Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons
title_full_unstemmed Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons
title_short Topological Switching and Orbiting Dynamics of Colloidal Spheres Dressed with Chiral Nematic Solitons
title_sort topological switching and orbiting dynamics of colloidal spheres dressed with chiral nematic solitons
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4256655/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25477195
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep07337
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