Light provides a powerful means of controlling physical behavior of materials but is rarely used to power and guide active matter systems. We demonstrate optical control of liquid crystalline topological solitons dubbed "skyrmions", which recently emerged as highly reconfigurable inanimate active particles capable of exhibiting emergent collective behaviors like schooling. Because of a chiral nematic liquid crystal's natural tendency to twist and its facile response to electric fields and light, it serves as a testbed for dynamic control of skyrmions and other active particles. Using ambient-intensity unstructured light, we demonstrate large-scale multifaceted reconfigurations and unjamming of collective skyrmion motions powered by oscillating electric fields and guided by optically-induced obstacles and patterned illumination.

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2015): Molecular vibration mode assignment of nematic liquid crystal 5CB on Terahertz spectra, Liquid Crystals, Using DFT/B3LYP/6-311++G** method, the molecular structure and absorption spectra in terahertz (THz) range of liquid crystal 5CB are investigated. In a frequency range 0-15 THz, an assignment of the vibrational modes corresponding to absorption frequencies is performed using potential energy distribution for the first time. It is found that the cyano group radical (-CN) do actively take part in the strongest THz absorption of 1.743, 3.942, 5.169 and 14.769 THz in different vibration modes. The results suggest that the strong polar group should be avoided in designing liquid crystal molecule and mixtures in order to reduce the absorption intensity in THz range.