Instabilities and Solitons in Minimal Strips
Condensed Matter journal club
Instabilities and Solitons in Minimal Strips
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 11th November 2016
- Speaker: Dr. Davide Michieletto (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Abstract
We show that highly twisted minimal strips can undergo a nonsingular transition, unlike the singular transitions seen in the Möbius strip and the catenoid. If the strip is nonorientable, this transition is topologically frustrated, and the resulting surface contains a helicoidal defect. Through a controlled analytic approximation, the system can be mapped onto a scalar φ4 theory on a nonorientable line bundle over the circle, where the defect becomes a topologically protected kink soliton or domain wall, thus establishing their existence in minimal surfaces. Demonstrations with soap films confirm these results and show how the position of the defect can be controlled through boundary deformation.PRL 117 article 017801 (2016)
pdf version
Authors
Thomas Machon, Gareth P. Alexander, Raymond E. Goldstein, Adriana I. Pesci
About Condensed Matter journal club
Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..