TGB phases: Abrikosov vortex lattices in liquid crystals

Analogy is one of the most powerful tools a physicist has to arrive at an understanding of the mysteries of nature. It allows us to make predictions about the properties of new systems from what we know about analogous well understood systems. One of the most striking analogies in physics is that introduced by de Gennes (P. de Gennes, Solid State Commun. 14 (1973) 997) between superconductors and liquid crystals. This talk will explore this analogy and show how it leads to a prediction of the remarkable twist-grain-boundary (TGB) phase, the liquid analog of the Abrikosov vortex lattice in superconductors