Dissipative structures in softly condensed monolayers

Under small perturbations, liquid crystalline monolayers can exhibit rare dissipative structures given rise to the strong molecular cooperative interactions. We show two examples here, one of which is the orientational wave propagation caused by weak light excitation and the other is coherent precession motion driven by transmembrane water transfer. In each case, the excitation itself has no in-plane direction but it couples to the anisotropic nature of liquid crystals, which determines the preferred way of wave propagation and rotational direction of the coherent precession. Unlike the dilute systems where the component-component interaction is negligible, the soft but strong molecular interaction of liquid crystals should play an essential role for the observed non-equilibrium dynamics.