Nonreciprocal chirality conversion in spatiotemporal evolutions of nematic colloidal entanglement.

In soft matter systems, there is a wealth of topological phenomena, such as singular disclination lines and nonsingular defects of skyrmions and hopfions. In a liquid crystal (LC), the topological nature of disclination lines and colloids induces chiral colloidal entanglements. How the chirality of the entanglements is deterministically created and how the chirality conversion is actuated in the disclinations with Möbius strip topology have never been explored.

Light-driven dancing of nematic colloids in fractional skyrmions and bimerons.

Materials with full and fractional skyrmions are important for fundamental studies and can be applied as information carriers for applications in spintronics or skyrmionics. However, creation, direct optical observation and manipulation of different skyrmion textures remain challenging. Besides, how the transformation of skyrmion textures directs the dynamics of colloids is not well understood.