Related papers: Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled act…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
The spontaneous generation of electrical activity underpins a number of essential physiological processes, and is observed even in tissues where specialized pacemaker cells have not been identified. The emergence of periodic oscillations in…
Droplets, sub-millilitre liquid volumes with at least one interface, have traditionally served as compartments for storing, transporting, and delivering materials. Beyond familiar applications in food, coatings, and consumer goods, they…
The term active matter describes diverse systems, spanning macroscopic (e.g. shoals of fish and flocks of birds) to microscopic scales (e.g. migrating cells, motile bacteria and gels formed through the interaction of nanoscale molecular…
Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…
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…
Microscopic active droplets are able to swim autonomously in viscous flows: this puzzling feature stems from solute exchanges with the surrounding fluid via surface reactions or their spontaneous solubilisation, and the interfacial flows…
Biological systems achieve precise control over ambient fluids through the self-organization of active protein structures including flagella, cilia, and cytoskeletal networks. In active structures individual proteins consume chemical energy…
Catalytically active colloids maintain non-equilibrium conditions in which they produce and deplete chemicals and hence effectively act as sources and sinks of molecules. While individual colloids that are symmetrically coated do not…
Non-equilibrium processes which convert chemical energy into mechanical motion enable the motility of organisms. Bundles of inextensible filaments driven by energy transduction of molecular motors form essential components of micron-scale…
Spontaneous directed motion, a hallmark of cell biology, is unusual in classical statistical physics. Here we study, using both numerical and analytical methods, organized motion in models of the cytoskeleton in which constituents are…
In nature interactions between biopolymers and motor proteins give rise to biologically essential emergent behaviours. Besides cytoskeleton mechanics, active nematics arise from such interactions. Here we present a study on 3D active…
We review recent advances in the design, synthesis, and modeling of active fluids. Active fluids have been at the center of many technological innovations and theoretical advances over the past two decades. Research on this new class of…
Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…
The field of synthetic active matter has, thus far, been led by efforts to create point-like, isolated (yet interacting) self-propelled objects (\emph{e.g.} colloids, droplets, microrobots) and understanding their collective dynamics. The…
Collective motion is a phenomenon observed across length scales in nature, from bacterial swarming and tissue migration to the flocking of animals. The mechanisms underlying this behavior vary significantly depending on the biological…
Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…
Molecular self-assembly is a well-known technique to create highly functional nanostructures on surfaces. Self-assembly on two-dimensional materials is a developing field and has already resulted in the discovery of several rich and…
Morphogenesis emerges from dynamic feedback among geometry, mechanics, and chemistry; however, disentangling these contributions in living systems remains challenging. Here, we focus on the interplay between geometry and mechanics by…
Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…