Introduction to Topological Defects and Solitons: In Liquid Crystals, Magnets, and Related Materials

This textbook introduces topological defects and solitons at a level suitable for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in physics and materials science. It avoids the formal mathematics of topology, and instead concentrates on the physical properties of these topological structures.

The first half of the book concentrates on fundamental principles of defects and solitons, and illustrates these principles with a single example—the xy model for 2D magnetic order. It begins ...