Frustration in soft matter: interplay between order and curvature

by Dr Oksana Manyuhina (Nordita)

Tuesday 31 May 2011, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

122:028

Soft matter essentially differs from hard matter and thus the approaches to study it are also different. Since the typical energy scale between the components of soft matter system is of the order of k_BT, the fluctuating and curved geometries are energetically accessible, and the language of differential geometry becomes useful. When we consider soft materials with characteristic length scale of the order of microns (thousands of molecules) the atomistic approach, which is widely used in solid state physics, becomes inappropriate. The phenomenology, on the other hand, turns out to be an adequate tool to describe the collective behaviour of the system. In this talk I will consider two examples, shape transformation of self-assembled vesicles and pattern formation in thin nematic films. Our theoretical findings give insight into recent experimental observations.