Related papers: Nematic order by elastic interactions and cellular…
Compliant environments can mediate interactions between mechanically active cells like fibroblasts. Starting with a phenomenological model for the behaviour of single cells, we use extensive Monte Carlo simulations to predict non-trivial…
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft and semi-soft nematic elastomers using two different but related dynamic theories. Our first formulation describes the pure hydrodynamic behavior of nematic elastomers in which…
The Green function method developed in Ref.[S. B. Chernyshuk and B. I. Lev, Phys. Rev. E \textbf{81}, 041707 (2010)] is used to describe elastic interactions between axially symmetric colloidal particles in the nematic cell in the presence…
A micrometer-scale elastic shell immersed in a nematic liquid crystal may be deformed by the host if the cost of deformation is comparable to the cost of elastic deformation of the nematic. Moreover, such inclusions interact and form chains…
Ordering configurations of a director field on a curved membrane induce stress. In this work, we present a theoretical framework to calculate the stress tensor and the torque as a consequence of the nematic ordering; we use the variational…
As an effective method to deliver external materials into biological cells, microinjection has been widely applied in the biomedical field. However, the cognition of cell mechanical property is still inadequate, which greatly limits the…
We theoretically study the nematic ordering transition of rods that are able to elastically adjust their mutually excluded volumes. The model rods, which consist of a hard core surrounded by a deformable shell, mimic the structure of…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
We analyse biased ensembles of trajectories for the random-field Ising model on a fully-connected lattice, which is described exactly by mean-field theory. By coupling the activity of the system to a dynamical biasing field, we find a range…
The emergence of macroscopic order and patterns is a central paradigm in systems of (self-)propelled agents, and a key component in the structuring of many biological systems.The relationships between the ordering process and the underlying…
We investigate the effect of an anisotropic substrate on the turbulent dynamics of a simulated two dimensional active nematic. This is introduced as an anisotropic friction and an effective anisotropic viscosity, with the orientation of the…
Stress transmission in planar open-cell cellular solids is analysed using a recent theory developed for marginally rigid granular assemblies. This is made possible by constructing a one-to-one mapping between the two systems. General…
Based on a mesoscopic theory we investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of a sheared nematic liquid, with the control parameter being the shear stress $\sigma_{\mathrm{xy}}$ (rather than the usual shear rate, $\dot\gamma$). To this end we…
In recurrent networks of leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons, mean-field theory has proven successful in describing various statistical properties of neuronal activity at equilibrium, such as firing rate distributions. Mean-field theory…
Complex tissue flows in epithelia are driven by intra- and inter-cellular processes that generate, maintain, and coordinate mechanical forces. There has been growing evidence that cell shape anisotropy, manifested as nematic order, plays an…
When nematic liquid crystals are embedded in random polymer networks, the disordered environment disrupts the long-range order, producing a glassy state. If an electric field is applied, it induces large and fairly temperature-independent…
We present a generalization of the Maier-Saupe (MS) theory that incorporates the description of the ferroelectric nematic phase (NF) within its scope of application. The extension of the theory is carried out in a natural way, by adding to…
Active nematic systems consist of rod-like internally driven subunits that interact with one another to form large-scale coherent flows. They are important examples of far-from-equilibrium fluids, which exhibit a wealth of nonlinear…
The isotropic-to-nematic transition in an athermal solution of long rigid rods subject to a gravitational (or centrifugal) field is theoretically considered in the Onsager approximation. The new feature emerging in the presence of gravity…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…