Charged Three-Dimensional Solitons in a Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystal

@misc{dhakal2026charged,
  title = {{Charged Three-Dimensional Solitons in a Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystal}},
  author = {Netra Prasad Dhakal and Zakaria Siddiquee and Hiroya Nishikawa and Fumito Araoka and James Gleeson and Samuel Sprunt and Antal Jakli},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06884},
  eprint = {2611.06884},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06884},
  note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Charged Three-Dimensional Solitons in a Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystal
AU  - Netra Prasad Dhakal
AU  - Zakaria Siddiquee
AU  - Hiroya Nishikawa
AU  - Fumito Araoka
AU  - James Gleeson
AU  - Samuel Sprunt
AU  - Antal Jakli
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/04
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06884
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06884
AB  - Experimental observations and computer simulation of formation and structural properties of so far experimentally never seen electrically charged propagating 3D solitons are reported. The propagating solitons appear spontaneously without an external field in a ferroelectric nematic (NF) liquid crystal under rapid cooling from the antiferroelectric (SmZA) phase. The observed solitons propagate either parallel or antiparallel to the ferroelectric polarization and annihilate when they collide with each other. They are attributed to either positively or negatively charged propagating local polarization splay formed to screen excess negative or positive mobile charge lumps in the NF phase. The presence of mobile charge is attributed to a spatially periodic charge distribution present in the antiferroelectric phase that temporarily remains after the temperature is quenched through the antiferroelectric- ferroelectric phase transition.
ER  -