期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2020
卷号:117
期号:39
页码:24102-24109
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2014402117
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:We describe a theory of packing hyperboloid “diabolic” domains in bend-free textures of liquid crystals. The domains sew together continuously, providing a menagerie of bend-free textures akin to the packing of focal conic domains in smectic liquid crystals. We show how distinct domains may be related to each other by Lorentz transformations and that this process may lower the elastic energy of the system. We discuss a number of phases that may be formed as a result, including splay–twist analogues of blue phases. We also discuss how these diabolic domains may be subject to “superluminal boosts,” yielding defects analogous to shock waves. We explore the geometry of these textures, demonstrating their relation to Milnor fibrations of the Hopf link. Finally, we show how the theory of these domains is unified in four-dimensional space.