Most of my
research is concerned with the statistical mechanics of several types
of complex liquids such as liquid crystals, solutions of surfactants
(i.e., amphiphillic molecules like soaps and lipids), and polymers.
It is an understatement to say that there is considerable current interest
in these types of systems on fundamental grounds as well as for their
technological and biological applications. These are "complex liquids"
from the viewpoint of their chemical structures, which in turn give
rise to very complicated intermolecular interactions that have to be
dealt with in order to understand the collective behavior of these molecules
in condensed phases.
Currently
I am studying a number of topics in the theory of complex liquids,
in connection with their equilibrium phase transitions, statistical
structures, fluctuation phenomena, and interfacial behavior. Most
of these studies involve standard statistical mechanical approaches
such as various forms of mean-field theory (e.g., Landau theory, density
functional or self-consistent field theory), thermodynamic perturbation
theory, and computer simulation methods.
To give an idea of my interests,
here are descriptions of a few projects with some pictures, and references
to published or submitted work. They
are on:(1) bulk and surface-induced smectic
ordering, (2)
dynamics of smectic liquid crystals, (3)
tilt ordering in Langmuir monolayers,
(4) liquid-crystalline
ordering in fluids of semiflexible molecules,
and, most recently, (5) effects of confinement
on liquid-crystalline ordering of semiflexible polymers.
Finally, here is a list
of recent papers written by me and my collaborators.
Most of them contain links to pdf files of the published papers.
