Spontaneous Chirality in Simple Systems

Abstract

Two simple examples of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking are presented. The first is close-packed cylindrically confined spheres. As the cylinder diameter is varied, one obtains a variety of chiral phases. The second example involves unconfined dipolar particles with an isotropic attraction, which also exhibits chiral ground states. We speculate that a dilute magnetorheological fluid film, with the addition of smaller particles to provide an attractive entropic interaction, will exhibit a chiral columnar ground state.