Topological edge floppy modes in disordered fiber networks
Soft Condensed Matter
2018-02-14 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Biological Physics
Abstract
Disordered fiber networks are ubiquitous in a broad range of natural (e.g., cytoskeleton) and manmade (e.g., aerogels) materials. In this paper, we discuss the emergence of topological floppy edge modes in these fiber networks as a result of deformation or active driving. It is known that a network of straight fibers exhibits bulk floppy modes which only bend the fibers without stretching them. We find that, interestingly, with a perturbation in geometry, these bulk modes evolve into edge modes. We introduce a topological index for these edge modes and discuss their implications in biology.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1708.03935,
title = {Topological edge floppy modes in disordered fiber networks},
author = {Di Zhou and Leyou Zhang and Xiaoming Mao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.03935},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
11 pages, 6 figures