Breaking the Rules for Topological Defects: Smectic Order on Conical Substrates

Abstract

Ordered phases on curved substrates experience a complex interplay of ordering and intrinsic curvature, commonly producing frustration and singularities. This is an especially important issue in crystals as ever-smaller scale materials are grown on real surfaces; eventually, surface imperfections are on the same scale as the lattice constant. Here, we gain insights into this general problem by studying two-dimensional smectic order on substrates with highly localized intrinsic curvature, constructed from cones and their intersections with planes. In doing so we take advantage of fully tractable "paper and tape" constructions, allowing us to understand, in detail, the induced cusps and singularities.

7 pages, figures included

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Particle-resolved topological defects of smectic colloidal liquid crystals in extreme confinement
• Evolution of populations expanding on curved surfaces
• Colloidal smectics in button-like confinements: experiment and theory
• Active smectics on a sphere
• Topology of orientational defects in confined smectic liquid crystals
• Non-Euclidean ideal spectrometer