Geometric Frustration Without Lattice
Another type of geometrical frustration arises from the propagation of a local order. A main question that a condensed matter physicist faces is to explain the stability of a solid.
It is sometime possible to establish some local rules, of chemical nature, which lead to low energy configurations and therefore govern structural and chemical order. This is not generally the case and often the local order defined by local interactions cannot propagate freely, leading to geometric frustration. A common feature of all these systems is that, even with simple local rules, they present a large set of, often complex, structural realizations. Geometric frustration plays in role in fields of condensed matter, ranging from clusters and amorphous solids to complex fluids.
The general method of approach to resolve these complications follows two steps. First, the constraint of perfect space-filling is relaxed by allowing for space curvature. An ideal, un-frustrated, structure is defined in this curved space. Then, specific distortions are applied to this ideal template in order to embed it into three dimensional Euclidean space. The final structure is a mixture of ordered regions, where the local order is similar to that of the template, and defects arising from the embedding. Among the possible defects, disclinations play an important role.
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