CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

We study the dynamics of defect annihilation and quasi-equilibrium configurations in flexible textured membranes suffering a symmetry breaking phase transition. The phase separation process and relaxational properties are deswcribed through a Brazovskii-Helfrich-CanhamHamiltonian. Topological defects favor the development of local curvature to geometrically screen out the intrinsic stress field generated by the perturbations to the low symetry phase. While in hexagonal systems the unbinding of dislocastions and Carraro-Nelson interactions between disclinations slow down the dynamics, in smectic system we found a wrinkled state where the bending forces are balanced by the wrinkled configuration found in the smectic systems show features that resemble those found in flexible thin films under small external loads.