Lifting ordered surfaces: Ellipsoidal nematic shells

Leonid V. Mirantsev, André M. Sonnet, and Epifanio G. Virga
Phys. Rev. E 98, 012701 – Published 20 July 2018

Abstract

When a material surface is functionalized so as to acquire some type of order, functionalization of which soft condensed matter systems have recently provided many interesting examples, the modeler faces an alternative. Either the order is described on the curved, physical surface where it belongs, or it is described on a flat surface that is unrolled as preimage of the physical surface under a suitable height function. This paper applies a general method that pursues the latter avenue by lifting whatever order tensor is deemed appropriate from a flat to a curved surface. We specialize this method to nematic shells, for which it also provides a simple but perhaps convincing interpretation of the outcomes of some molecular dynamics experiments on ellipsoidal shells.

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  • Received 26 March 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.98.012701

©2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Polymers & Soft Matter

Authors & Affiliations

Leonid V. Mirantsev

  • Institute of the Problems of Mechanical Engineering, Academy of Sciences of Russia, St. Petersburg 199178, Russia

André M. Sonnet

  • Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH, Scotland, United Kingdom

Epifanio G. Virga

  • Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Pavia, Via Ferrata 5, 27100 Pavia, Italy

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Vol. 98, Iss. 1 — July 2018

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