Related papers: Deterministic endless collective evolvement in act…
We show that "dry" active nematics, e.g. collections of shaken elongated granular particles, exhibit large-scale spatiotemporal chaos made of interacting dense, ordered, band-like structures in a parameter region including the linear onset…
Active nematics are conceptually the simplest orientationally ordered phase of self-driven particles, but have proved to be a perennial source of surprises. We show here through numerical solution of coarse-grained equations for order…
We study the long-time behavior of global strong solutions to a hydrodynamic system for nonhomogeneous incompressible nematic liquid crystal flows driven by two types of external forces in a smooth bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^2$. For…
We consider a phenomenological continuum model for an active nematic fluid and show a universal, model independent, instability which renders the homogeneous nematic state unstable to order fluctuations. Using numerical and analytic tools…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…
We construct the equations of motion for the coupled dynamics of order parameter and concentration for the nematic phase of driven particles on a solid surface, and show that they imply (i) giant number fluctuations, with a standard…
Systems driven far from equilibrium may exhibit anomalous density fluctuations: active matter with orientational order display giant density fluctuations at large scale, while systems of interacting particles close to an absorbing phase…
Using agent-based simulations of self-propelled particles subject to short-range repulsion and nematic alignment we explore the dynamical phases of a dense active material confined to the surface of a sphere. We map the dynamical phase…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
We study a continuum model of an extensile active nematic to show that mesoscale turbulence develops in two stages: (i) ordered regions undergo an intrinsic hydrodynamic instability generating walls, lines of stong bend deformations, (ii)…
Active fluids display spontaneous turbulent-like flows known as active turbulence. Recent work revealed that these flows have universal features, independent of the material properties and of the presence of topological defects. However,…
Living materials at different length scales manifest active nematic features such as orientational order, nematic topological defects, and active nematic turbulence. Using numerical simulations we investigate the impact of fluid inertia on…
Active nematics are dense systems of rodlike particles that consume energy to drive motion at the level of the individual particles. They exist in natural systems like biological tissues and artificial materials such as suspensions of…
One of the defining features of active nematics is that above a critical activity the quiescent state becomes unstable to a distorted, flowing one. We show that spatial variations in activity can fundamentally change the nature of this…
Motivated by recent experiments on growing fibroblasts, we examine the development of nematic order in a colony of elongated cells proliferating on a nematic elastomer substrate. After sparse seeding, the cells divide and grow into locally…
We investigate hard ellipsoids of revolution in a parameter regime where no long range nematic order is present but already finite size domains are formed which show orientational order. Domain formation leads to a substantial slowing down…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
Recent studies of the phase diagram for spherical, purely repulsive, active particles established the existence of a transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like phase analogous to the one observed in colloidal systems at thermal…
We study the growth of aligned domains in nematic liquid crystals. Results are obtained solving the Beris-Edwards equations of motion using the lattice Boltzmann approach. Spatial anisotropy in the domain growth is shown to be a consequence…