Half-integer topological defects paired via string micelles in polar liquids
Zhongjie Ma, Miao Jiang, Yaohao Song, Aile Sun, Shengzhu Yi, Chao Zhou, Xiang Huang, Mingjun Huang, Satoshi Aya, Qi-Huo Wei, Gary Grest · 2024
Read Half-integer topological defects paired via string micelles in polar liquids by Zhongjie Ma, Miao Jiang, Yaohao Song, Aile Sun, Shengzhu Yi, Chao Zhou, Xiang Huang, Mingjun Huang, Satoshi Aya, Qi-Huo Wei, Gary Grest (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11658416.txt.
Description
Zhongjie Ma leads a team of eleven physicists reporting strange strings in a polar liquid crystal: threadlike micelles that pair up topological defects like beads on a wire. Ferroelectric nematic crystals host defects in their polarization field, and doping them with charged polymers reshapes the landscape. Under the microscope, the strings show butterfly textures, with the polarization field split by kink walls into uniform and splayed domains.
Tracking the strings' motion in electric fields and measuring polarization divergence showed the micelles are positively charged, with positive bound charge along their sides. The authors propose a double-layer charge model: a dense inner layer of polymer chains and crystal molecules, wrapped in a diffuse layer of small ions. Only positively charged polymer doping created the strings.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Zhongjie Ma, Miao Jiang, Yaohao Song, Aile Sun, Shengzhu Yi, Chao Zhou, Xiang Huang, Mingjun Huang, Satoshi Aya, Qi-Huo Wei, Gary Grest |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 37 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |