Euler characteristic

The surface dividing the components of the mixture formed by a layer of surfactant characterizes the structure of the mixture on a mesoscopic length scale. This interface is described by its global properties such as the surface area, the Euler characteristic or genus, distribution of normal vectors, or in more detail by its local properties such as the mean and Gaussian curvatures. 

The Euler characteristic for a closed surface is related to the Gaussian K curvature and genus g of this surface in the following way [33,29]... 

The Euler characteristic for a surface built of polygons is much more conveniently calculated according to the Euler formula [33]... 

Typical runs consist of 100 000 up to 300 000 MC moves per lattice site. Far from the phase transition in the lamellar phase, the typical equilibration run takes 10 000 Monte Carlo steps per site (MCS). In the vicinity of the phase transitions the equilibration takes up to 200 000 MCS. For the rough estimate of the equihbration time one can monitor internal energy as well as the Euler characteristic. The equilibration time for the energy and Euler characteristic are roughly the same. For go = /o = 0 it takes 10 000 MCS to obtain the equilibrium configuration in which one finds the lamellar phase without passages and consequently the Euler characteristic is zero. For go = —3.15 and/o = 0 (close to the phase transition) it takes more than 50 000 MCS for the equihbration and here the Euler characteristic fluctuates around its mean value of —48. 

The second difference is related to the structure of the lamellar phase. The Euler characteristic has been assumed zero in the whole lamellar phase by Gompper and Kraus [47], whereas we show that it fluctuates strongly in the lamellar phase between the transition line and the topological disorder fine. The notion of the topological disorder line has not appeared in their paper. We think that the topological disorder line is much closer to the transition... 

The behavior of the internal energy, heat capacity, Euler characteristic, and its variance ( x ) x) ) the microemulsion-lamellar transition is shown in Fig. 12. Both U and (x) jump at the transition, and the heat capacity, and (x ) - (x) have a peak at the transition. The relative jump in the Euler characteristic is larger than the one in the internal energy. Also, the relative height of the peak in x ) - x) is bigger than in the heat capacity. Conclude both quantities x) and x ) - can be used to locate the phase transition in systems with internal surfaces. 

In this way, by taking the average over the field 4> and computing the Euler characteristic for the average surface given by (f)) = 0, we can easily discern between different ordered phases. In this example (Fig. 13) the snapshot... 

FIG. 12 The behavior of the internal energy U (per site), heat capacity Cy (per site), the average Euler characteristic (x) and its variance (x") — (x) close to the transition line and at the transition to the lamellar phase for/o = 0. The changes are small at the transition and the transition is very weakly first-order. The weakness of the transition is related to the proliferation of the wormhole passages, which make the lamellar phase locally very similar to the microemulsion phase (Fig. 13). Note also that the values of the energy and heat capacity are not very much different from their values (i.e., 0.5 per site) in the Gaussian approximation of the model [47]. (After Ref. 49.)... 

For diffuse and delocahzed interfaces one can still define a mathematical surface which in some way describes the film, for example by 0(r) = 0. A problem arises if one wants to compare the structure of microemulsion and of ordered phases within one formalism. The problem is caused by the topological fluctuations. As was shown, the Euler characteristic averaged over the surfaces, (x(0(r) = 0)), is different from the Euler characteristics of the average surface, x((0(r)) = 0), in the ordered phases. This difference is large in the lamellar phase, especially close to the transition to the microemulsion. x((0(r)) =0) is a natural quantity for the description of the structure of the ordered phases. For microemulsion, however, (0(r)) = 0 everywhere, and the only meaningful quantity is (x(0(r) = 0))-... 

R. Holyst, W. Gozdz. Fluctuating Euler characteristics, topological disorder line, and passages in lamellar phases. J Chem Phys 706 4773- 780, 1997. 

In what follows we will discuss systems with internal surfaces, ordered surfaces, topological transformations, and dynamical scaling. In Section II we shall show specific examples of mesoscopic systems with special attention devoted to the surfaces in the system—that is, periodic surfaces in surfactant systems, periodic surfaces in diblock copolymers, bicontinuous disordered interfaces in spinodally decomposing blends, ordered charge density wave patterns in electron liquids, and dissipative structures in reaction-diffusion systems. In Section III we will present the detailed theory of morphological measures the Euler characteristic, the Gaussian and mean curvatures, and so on. In fact, Sections II and III can be read independently because Section II shows specific models while Section III is devoted to the numerical and analytical computations of the surface characteristics. In a sense, Section III is robust that is, the methods presented in Section III apply to a variety of systems, not only the systems shown as examples in Section II. Brief conclusions are presented in Section IV. 

Figure 7. Topological fluctuations of the lamellar phase at different points of the phase diagram, (a) Single fusion between the lamellae by a passage (this configuration is close to the topological disorder line), (b) Configuration close to the transition to the disordered microemulsion phase the Euler characteristic is large and negative.

Figure 14. The phase diagram of the gradient copolymer melt with the distribution functions g(x) = l — tanh(ciit(x —fo)) shown in the insert of this figure for ci = 3,/o = 0.5 (solid line), and/o — 0.3 (dashed line), x gives the position of ith monomer from the end of the chain in the units of the linear chain length. % is the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter, N is a polymerization index, and/ is the composition (/ = J0 g(x) dx). The Euler characteristic of the isotropic phase (I) is zero, and that of the hexagonal phase (H) is zero. For the bcc phase (B), XEuier = 4 per unit cell for the double gyroid phase (G), XEuier = -16 per unit cell and for the lamellar phases (LAM), XEuier = 0.

The phase diagram in Fig. 14 can be analyzed by using the Euler characteristic. The disordered phase contains no surfaces, and therefore the Euler characteristic is zero. The bcc phase [Fig. 13(b)] within the two-shell approximation is expressed as... 

The Euler characteristic of the hexagonal phase [Fig. 13(c)] is 0, since the Euler characteristic of each cylinder is zero. The double gyroid phase (Fig. 5) within the two-shell approximation is represented as... 

Figure 15. The periodic SI surface of the Ia3d symmetry. The Euler characteristic of this surface is —52 per unit cell.

The Euler characteristic density of the bicontinuous HPL structure is close to the Euler characteristic density of the DG phase. Also, the free-energy costs of... 

Figure 17. Different stages of the spinodal decomposition in a symmetric mixture (4>0 = 0.5) r is the dimensionless time. The Euler characteristic is negative, which indicates that the surfaces are bicontinuous. The Euler characteristic increases with dimensionless time. This indicates that the surface connectivity decreases.

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