Alberto Fernandez-Nieves - Toroids, Active Nematics and Topological Defects
We will discuss recent results with active nematics confined to either toroidal space. We will first review how we make and stabilize non-spherical droplets and describe how curvature affects defect arrangement on tori. We will show that despite the intrinsic activity and out-of-equilibrium character of the system, there are still remnants of the expected curvature-induced defect unbinding predicted for nematics in their ground state. Activity, however, augments the behavior leading to unexpected defect distributions. We will then focus on defect orientation and show that on flat space, there is short-range orientational correlations without long-range orientational order.