Helen Ansell

Portrait of Helen Ansell.

Alumni

Patel Group roles
  • Former Visiting Student
Research interests
Ordered soft matter, Nematic liquid crystals, Defect structures

Physics graduate student, also in Kamien group. Kamien Group Webpage

Research interests

During my time in the Patel Group, my research focused on ordered soft matter systems in which the bulk ground state is not compatible with the confining geometry. I studied the defect structures that arise as a result of confinement using a combination of analytical and molecular dynamics techniques. The systems included nematic liquid crystals, which display rotational order but no translational order, and the Abrikosov vortex lattice of type-II superconductors, for which the two-dimensional ground state is a triangular lattice. In the Patel Group, I investigated the defect structures of nematic liquid crystals confined to spherical shells under different surface anchoring conditions using coarse-grained molecular dynamics techniques.

Nematic liquid crystal simulation with planar alignment at the inner and outer surfaces of a spherical shell.
Planar alignment at the inner and outer surfaces; mesogens are colored by orientation relative to the radial direction.
Nematic liquid crystal simulation with perpendicular alignment at the inner and outer surfaces of a spherical shell.
Perpendicular alignment at the inner and outer surfaces; mesogens are colored by orientation relative to the radial direction.