Les Houches School of PhysicsSince 1951

There has been a recent explosion of interest for smectics, as a paradigmatic example of a layered fluid. A liquid crystal is also an ideal testbed to verify experimentally theoretical predictions concerning topological defects. The general topic of this workshop thus concerns soft matter structures with a focus on smectics and on liquid crystal topological defects. We will bring together computational physicists, applied mathematicians, theorists, and experimentalists to combine their respective expertise with the goal of understanding in depth layered structures but also topological defects of those materials.