No Arabic abstract
Whereas disclination defects are energetically prohibitive in two-dimensional flat crystals, their existence is necessary in crystals with spherical topology, such as viral capsids, colloidosomes or fullerenes. Such a geometrical frustration gives rise to large elastic stresses, which render the crystal unstable when its size is significantly larger than the typical lattice spacing. Depending on the compliance of the crystal with respect to stretching and bending deformations, these stresses are alleviated by either a local increase of the intrinsic curvature in proximity of the disclinations or by the proliferation of excess dislocations, often organized in the form of one-dimensional chains known as scars. The associated strain field of the scars is such to counterbalance the one resulting from the isolated disclinations. Here, we develop a continuum theory of dislocation screening in two-dimensional closed crystals with genus one. Upon modeling the flux of scars emanating from a given disclination as an independent scalar field, we demonstrate that the elastic energy of closed two-dimensional crystals with various degrees of asphericity can be expressed as a simple quadratic function of the screened topological charge of the disclinations, both at zero and finite temperature. This allows us to predict the optimal density of the excess dislocations as well as the minimal stretching energy attained by the crystal.
At high area fractions, monolayers of colloidal dimer particles form a degenerate crystal (DC) structure in which the particle lobes occupy triangular lattice sites while the particles are oriented randomly along any of the three lattice directions. We report that dislocation glide in DCs is blocked by certain particle orientations. The mean number of lattice constants between such obstacles is 4.6 +/- 0.2 in experimentally observed DC grains and 6.18 +/- 0.01 in simulated monocrystalline DCs. Dislocation propagation beyond these obstacles is observed to proceed through dislocation reactions. We estimate that the energetic cost of dislocation pair separation via such reactions in an otherwise defect free DC grows linearly with final separation, hinting that the material properties of DCs may be dramatically different from those of 2-D crystals of spheres.
We study the topology of smectic defects in two and three dimensions. We give a topological classification of smectic point defects and disclination lines in three dimensions. In addition we describe the combination rules for smectic point defects in two and three dimensions, showing how the broken translational symmetry of the smectic confers a path dependence on the result of defect addition.
We demonstrate that crystal defects can act as a probe of intrinsic non-Hermitian topology. In particular, in point-gapped systems with periodic boundary conditions, a pair of dislocations may induce a non-Hermitian skin effect, where an extensive number of Hamiltonian eigenstates localize at only one of the two dislocations. An example of such a phase are two-dimensional systems exhibiting weak non-Hermitian topology, which are adiabatically related to a decoupled stack of one-dimensional Hatano-Nelson chains. Moreover, we show that strong two-dimensional point gap topology may also result in a dislocation response, even when there is no skin effect present with open boundary conditions. For both cases, we directly relate their bulk topology to a stable dislocation skin effect. Finally, and in stark contrast to the Hermitian case, we find that gapless non-Hermitian systems hosting bulk exceptional points also give rise to a well-localized dislocation response.
Although fragile topology has been intensely studied in static crystals, it is not clear how to generalize the concept to dynamical systems. In this work, we generalize the concept of fragile topology, and provide a definition of fragile topology for noninteracting Floquet crystals, which we refer to as dynamical fragile topology. In contrast to the static fragile topology defined for Wannier obstruction, dynamical fragile topology is defined for the nontrivial quantum dynamics characterized by obstruction to static limits (OTSL). Specifically, OTSL of a Floquet crystal is fragile if and only if the OTSL disappears after adding a symmetry-preserving static Hamiltonian in a direct-sum way preserving the relevant gaps (RGs). We further present a concrete 2+1D example for dynamical fragile topology, based on a slight modification of the model in [Rudner et al, Phys. Rev. X 3, 031005 (2013)]. The fragile OTSL in the 2+1D example exhibits anomalous chiral edge modes for a natural open boundary condition, and does not require any crystalline symmetries besides lattice translations. Our work paves the way to study fragile topology for general quantum dynamics.
We calculate the dislocation glide mobility in solid $^4$He within a model that assumes the existence of a superfluid field associated with dislocation lines. Prompted by the results of this mobility calculation, we study within this model the role that such a superfluid field may play in the motion of the dislocation line when a stress is applied to the crystal. To do this, we relate the damping of dislocation motion, calculated in the presence of the assumed superfluid field, to the shear modulus of the crystal. As the temperature increases, we find that a sharp drop in the shear modulus will occur at the temperature where the superfluid field disappears. We compare the drop in shear modulus of the crystal arising from the temperature dependence of the damping contribution due to the superfluid field, to the experimental observation of the same phenomena in solid $^4$He and find quantitative agreement. Our results indicate that such a superfluid field plays an important role in dislocation pinning in a clean solid $^4$He at low temperatures and in this regime may provide an alternative source for the unusual elastic phenomena observed in solid $^4$He.