2017/03/31 by Norbert Stoop, Jörn Dunkel
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Geometry #Liquid crystal #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Nucleation #Phase transition #Physics #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Surface (topology) #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermal fluctuations #Topological defect #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1039/c7sm02233f
published as Soft Matter 14: 2329-2338, 2018 · 8 pages, 3 figures; introduction and typos corrected
arxiv created 2017/04/18 · openalex publication_date 2018/01/01 · arxiv updated 2018/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Topological defects shape the material and transport properties of physical systems. Examples range from vortex lines in quantum superfluids, defect-mediated buckling of graphene, and grain boundaries in ferromagnets and colloidal crystals, to domain structures formed in the early universe. The Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism describes the topological defect formation in continuous non-equilibrium phase transitions with a constant finite quench rate. Universal KZ scaling laws have been verified experimentally and numerically for second-order transitions in planar Euclidean geometries, but their validity for non-thermal transitions in curved and topologically nontrivial systems still poses open questions. Here, we use recent experimentally confirmed theory to investigate topological defect formation in curved elastic surface crystals formed by stress-quenching a bilayer material. For both spherical and toroidal crystals, we find that the defect densities follow KZ-type power laws. Moreover, the nucleation sequences agree with recent experimental observations for spherical colloidal crystals. Our results suggest that curved elastic bilayers provide an experimentally accessible macroscopic system to study universal properties of non-thermal phase transitions in non-planar geometries.