Polarized light interacting with a particle injected into a liquid crystal medium. (Photo: Bohdan Senyuk and Ivan Smalyukh)
By showing that tiny particles injected into a liquid crystal medium behave as predicted by existing mathematical theorems, physicists have opened the door for the creation of a host of new materials with properties that do not exist in nature. The findings show that researchers can create a "recipe book" to build new materials of sorts using topology, a major mathematical field that describes the properties that do not change when an object is stretched, bent or otherwise "continuously deformed." Randall Kamien and Tom Lubensky , both professors in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences , contributed to a study lead by Ivan Smalyukh of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Other collaborators include Sailing He of Zhejiang University in China and Robert Kusner of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The study is the first experiment to show that some of the most important topological theorems hold up in the real material world. "The beauty of liquid crystals is that the abstract notions of topology can be directly visualized with a regular microscope," Kamien said. "The striking, colorful figures reveal a more profound, underlying structure. It's like music; after the first time you hear something you begin to realize that there is deeper structure." Smalyukh, postdoctoral researcher Bohdan Senyuk and doctoral student Qingkun Liu set up the experiment by creating colloids - solutions in which tiny particles are dispersed, but not dissolved, throughout a host medium.
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