Physical systems producing caustics may possess symmetries. In that case the relation between the symmetry of the system, considered as a whole, and the symmetry of the caustic follow a very general symmetry principle, the Curie principle. We give various examples of application of the Curie principle to caustics produced by the deflection of light in liquid crystals: the so called squint effect, the visualization of a new type of roll structure, etc. We show also that the Curie principle applies to physical systems having multiple stable states (variants).
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The singularities occurring in any sort of ordering are known in physics as defects. In an organized fluid defects may occur both at microscopic (molecular) and at macroscopic scales when hydrodynamic ordered structures are developed. Such a fluid system serves as a model for the study of the evolution towards a strong disorder (chaos) and it is found that the singularities play an important role in the nature of the chaos. Moreover both types of defects become coupled at the onset of turbulence. Besides this specificity, the results can be generalized to any structured physical system. They tend to demonstrate that the full knowledge of the system is "contained inside the surroundings of the singularity". It is also shown that such defects play a crucial role in all types of transitions between homogeneously ordered states from the rest state up to chaos.
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