Related papers: Buckling instability for a charged and fluctuating…
Biopolymer looping is a dynamic process that occurs ubiquitously in cells for gene regulation, protein folding, etc. In cellular environments, biopolymers are often subject to tensions which are either static, or temporally fluctuating far…
We present a general theoretical analysis of semiflexible filaments subject to viscous drag or point forcing. These are the relevant forces in dynamic experiments designed to measure biopolymer bending moduli. By analogy with the ``Stokes…
Concepts from elementary quantum mechanics can be used to understand vortex line fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors. Flux lines are essentially classical objects, described by a string tension, their mutual repulsion, and…
We study low--temperature non Gaussian thermal fluctuations of a system of classical particles around a (hypothetical) crystalline ground state. These thermal fluctuations are described by the behaviour of a system of long range interacting…
We consider a model of an extensible semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a motility assay of motor proteins represented explicitly as active harmonic linkers. Their heads bind stochastically to polymer segments within a…
Recently (arXiv:0910.2870), we have derived a fluctuation theorem for systems in thermodynamic equilibrium compatible with anomalous response functions, e.g. the existence of states with \textit{negative heat capacities} $C<0$. In this…
Mechanical instability takes different forms in various ordered and disordered systems. We study the effect of thermal fluctuations in two disordered central-force lattice models near mechanical instability: randomly diluted triangular…
Using results from Schramm Loewner evolution (SLE), we give the expression of the fluctuation-induced force exerted by a polymer on a small impenetrable disk, in various 2-dimensional domain geometries. We generalize to two polymers and…
Subjected to compressive stresses, soft polymers with stiffness gradients can display various buckling patterns. These compressive stresses can have different origins, like mechanical forces, temperature changes, or, for hydrogel materials,…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a semiflexible polymer confined in a cylindrical microchannel and exposed to a Poiseuille flow is studied by mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations. For a polymer with a length half of…
We study the bulk and shear elastic properties of barely-compressed, "athermal" emulsions and find that the rigidity of the jammed solid fails at remarkably large critical osmotic pressures. The minuscule yield strain and similarly small…
We study the nonequilibrium kinetics during the coil-globule transition of a flexible polymer chain with active beads after a quench from good to poor solvent condition using molecular dynamics simulation. Activity for each bead is…
We elucidate the polymer dynamics of a liquid crystal elastomer based on the time-dependent response of the pendent liquid crystal mesogens. The molecular tilt and switching time of mesogens are analyzed as a function of temperature and…
Coupled systems in mesoscopic regime are of interest as charge fluctuation between the sub-systems will depend on electron-electron interactions and will play a dominant role in determining their thermodynamic properties. We study some…
When stretched uniaxially, a thin elastic sheet may exhibit buckling. The occurrence of buckling depends on the geometrical properties of the sheet and the magnitude of the applied strain. Here we show that an elastomeric sheet initially…
Buckling plays a critical role in the transport and dynamics of elastic microfilaments in Stokesian fluids. However, previous work has only considered filaments with homogeneous structural properties. Filament backbone stiffness can be…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study a unique expanded jammed state. Tension transforms many glassy polymers from a dense glass to a network of fibrils and voids called a craze. Entanglements between polymers and interchain…
We report tensile failure experiments on polyurethane (PU) foams. Experiments have been performed by imposing a constant strain rate. We work on heterogeneous materials for whom the failure does not occur suddenly and can develop as a…
The archetypal instability of a structure is associated with the eponymous Euler beam, modeled as an inextensible curve which exhibits a supercritical bifurcation at a critical compressive load. In contrast, a soft compressible beam is…
Flutter instability in an infinite medium is a form of material instability corresponding to the occurrence of complex conjugate squares of the acceleration wave velocities. Although its occurrence is known to be possible in elastoplastic…