Spontaneous chirality in simple systems

Two simple examples of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking are presented. The first is close-packed cylindrically confined spheres. As the cylinder d iameter is varied, one obtains a variety of chiral phases. The second examp le involves unconfined dipolar particles with an isotropic attraction, whic h also exhibits chiral ground states. We speculate that a dilute magnetorhe ological fluid film, with the addition of smaller particles to provide an a ttractive entropic interaction, will exhibit a chiral columnar ground state .