Physics Research
Physics Research
Chiral Fluids
In an ordinary fluid, like water, the rotation of the individual building blocks of the fluid are constrained by the surrounding flow. We lift this constraint by building a fluid out of millions of particles that we actively and constantly spin. Breaking symmetry in this way gives rise to new and exciting properties, including Hall viscosity, an experimentally elusive and long sought property of chiral fluids.
Read our article in Nature Physics
science news articles: Phys.org, Nature news and views
Conformal Crystals
Particles that repel each other can form intriguing patterns when confined by external fields. These patterns are locally crystal-like, but globally may show great variation in the size and orientation of the unit cell. Despite their appearance in many systems, such as foams or electrically charged particles, there is relatively little understanding of their structure and material properties. We show that the properties of such systems come into focus when viewing them as projections of uniform crystals on curved surfaces.
Shape-Driven Phases and Transitions
The connection between overall structures and the geometry of their building blocks has played a key role in our understanding of materials. A familiar example comes from dense packings of shapes, such as spheres arranged in a face-centered cubic lattice. We study the self-assembly of particles whose shapes interpolate between spheres and cubes. By leveraging the geometry of these microscopic particles, we are able to tune the structures they form, and even dynamically and reversibly transition between material phases.
See a full list of my publications here