Fig. 3
Elastic multipole induced by a gourd-shaped particle. a–c Textures of a sample with a gourd-like particle in a nematic cell from optical polarizing, a without and b with a retardation plate, and c bright field microscopy. d, e Schematic diagram (blue lines) of n(r) at the surface and corresponding color-coded diagram of nx. f Calculated n(r). g, h Map of elastic interactions between gourd particles with respect to n0 calculated for elastic 64-poles with (g) only 64-pole non-zero coefficient and (h) experimentally measured. Dashed red line in (h) separates maps of interactions for parallel and antiparallel particles. i, j Separation vs. time dependence for gourd particles elastically interacting along the direction approximately (i) perpendicular and (j) parallel to n0. Insets show the corresponding dependence of the interaction potential from the distance between particles with a 64-pole coefficient b6 ≈ −3 × 10−5 extracted from fitting. k–o Textures of self-assembled pairs of the gourd-shaped particles imaged by bright-field microscopy. Scale bar: 5 μm
