Related papers: Revisiting the entropic force between fluctuating …
The response of thermodynamic systems perturbed out of an equilibrium steady-state is described by the reciprocal and the fluctuation-dissipation relations. The so-called fluctuation theorems extended the study of fluctuations far beyond…
The statistical mechanics of equilibrium interfaces has been well-established for over a half century. In the last decade, a wealth of observations have made increasingly clear that a new perspective is required to describe interfaces…
We show that the short-scale elastic distortions that are excited in the vicinity of the joint between different lipidic membrane domains (at a scale of \~10 nm) may produce a "crease" from the point of view of the standard elastic…
We calculate the effective force mediated by thermally excited capillary waves between spherical or disklike colloids trapped at a fluid interface. This Casimir type interaction is shown to depend sensitively on the boundary conditions…
Non-equilibrium and active effects in mesoscopic scale systems have heralded a new era of scientific inquiries, whether concerning meta-materials or biological systems such as bacteria and cellular components. At mesoscopic scales,…
We study the structure and dynamics of the interface separating a passive fluid from a microtubule-based active fluid. Turbulent-like active flows power giant interfacial fluctuations, which exhibit pronounced asymmetry between regions of…
It is well known that equilibrium in a thermodynamic system results from a competition or balance between lowering the energy and increasing the entropy, or at least the product of the temperature and entropy. This is remarkably similar to…
Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the…
We analyze the transverse intersubstrate pseudo-Casimir force, arising as a result of thermal fluctuations of the liquid crystalline layers of a smectic-A film confined between two planar substrates in a bookshelf geometry, in which the…
Membrane tension is an acknowledged regulator of a wide array of cell functions; however, whether it acts locally or globally in different contexts remains debated. Recent experiments that locally perturb tension and measure the response…
Soft solids with tunable mechanical response are at the core of new material technologies, but a crucial limit for applications is their progressive aging over time, which dramatically affects their functionalities. The generally accepted…
The unique pressure exerted by active particles -- the "swim" pressure -- has proven to be a useful quantity in explaining many of the seemingly confounding behaviors of active particles. However, its use has also resulted in some puzzling…
Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…
Deformation of a fluid interface caused by the presence of objects at the interface can lead to large lateral forces between the objects. We explore these fluid-mediated attractive force between partially submerged vertical cylinders.…
Surface effects are generally prevailing in confined colloidal systems. Here we report on dispersed nanoparticles close to a fluid membrane. Exact results regarding the static organization are derived for a dilute solution of non-adhesive…
Hypothesis: The collective dynamics and self-assembly of colloids floating at a fluid/fluid interface is a balance between deterministic lateral interaction forces, viscous resistance to colloid motion along the surface and thermal…
The dynamical properties and mechanical functions of amorphous materials are governed by their microscopic structures, particularly the elasticity of the interaction networks, which is generally complicated by structural heterogeneity. This…
We present theoretical analyses and numerical simulations for the adhesion-induced phase separation of multi-component membranes with two types of ligand-receptor complexes (junctions). We show that after integrating all possible…
We report on the onset of fluid entrainment when a contact line is forced to advance over a dry solid of arbitrary wettability. We show that entrainment occurs at a critical advancing speed beyond which the balance between capillary,…
Thermal fluctuations in non-equilibrium steady states generically lead to power law decay of correlations for conserved quantities. Embedded bodies which constrain fluctuations in turn experience fluctuation induced forces. We compute these…