Mathlab seminar announcement

[Emanuele Tuillier Illingworth]

MATHLAB SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT


Speaker: Mark Bowick - Syracuse University, USA

Title: On Shape and Order in Soft Matter

Abstract: After some general introduction on unusual minima and shape 
problems in soft matter I will treat the specific case of liquid 
crystalline vesicles. The shape of liquid-crystalline vesicles, 
molecularly thin membrane sacs enclosing a finite volume, is determined 
by the competition between liquid-crystalline deformations on a surface 
to be determined and the bending energy of the surface in the ambient 
bulk. We analyze this problem in two limits: stiff (high bending 
rigidity compared to Frank modulus) and floppy (low bending energy 
compared to Frank modulus). The solution in the floppy limit is quite 
remarkable: it is the surface of a regular tetrahedron with topological 
defects at the vertices. Thus floppy liquid crystalline vesicles, which 
have no translational order, are sharp faceted structures more commonly 
found in hard crystalline materials.

Venue: Wednesday 22 May at 2 pm in lecture room 004

-- 
Dr. Emanuele Tuillier Illingworth
Secretary of the Mathematics Area
Building A, II floor, room 214
phone (+39) 040 37 87 598
fax (+39) 040 37 87 466
SISSA
Via Bonomea 265
34136
Trieste, ITALY
emanuele.tuillier at sissa.it