Related papers: Energy barriers govern glassy dynamics in tissues
We discuss the low-temperature dynamics of an elastic manifold driven through a random medium. For driving forces well below the $T=0$ depinning force, the medium advances via thermally activated hops over the energy barriers separating…
We use confocal microscopy to study the motions of particles in concentrated colloidal systems. Near the glass transition, diffusive motion is inhibited, as particles spend time trapped in transient ``cages'' formed by neighboring…
As wounds heal, embryos develop, cancer spreads, or asthma progresses, the cellular monolayer undergoes glass transition between solid-like jammed and fluid-like flowing states. During some of these processes, the cells undergo an…
Recent experiments have revealed that cytoplasms become glassy when their metabolism is suppressed, while they maintain fluidity in a living state. The mechanism of this active fluidization is not clear, especially for bacterial cytoplasms,…
Many amorphous glassy materials exhibit complex spatio-temporal mechanical response and rheology, characterized by an intermittent stress-strain response and a fluctuating velocity profile. Under quasistatic and athermal deformation…
Experimental evidence shows that there is a feedback between cell shape and cell motion. How this feedback impacts the collective behavior of dense cell monolayers remains an open question. We investigate the effect of a feedback that tends…
Here we introduce a variation of the trap model of glasses based on softness, a local structural variable identified by machine learning, in supercooled liquids. Softness is a particle-based quantity that reflects the local structural…
We present a model for glassy dynamics in supercooled liquid mixtures. Given the relaxation behavior of individual supercooled liquids, the model predicts the relaxation times of their mixtures as temperature is decreased. The model is…
Understanding the role that structure plays in the dynamical arrest observed in glassy systems remains an open challenge. Over the last decade, machine learning (ML) strategies have emerged as an important tool for probing this…
Advances in synthetic biology allow us to engineer bacterial collectives with pre-specified characteristics. However, the behavior of these collectives is difficult to understand, as cellular growth and division as well as extra-cellular…
The low-temperature driven or thermally activated motion of several condensed matter systems is often modeled by the dynamics of interfaces (co-dimension-1 elastic manifolds) subject to a random potential. Two characteristic quantitative…
Signatures of glassy dynamics have been identified experimentally for a rich variety of materials in which molecular networks provide rigidity. Here we present a theoretical framework to study the glassy behavior of both passive and active…
Understanding how biomechanical reorganization governs key biological processes, such as morphogenesis and development, requires predictive insights into stress distributions and cellular behavior. While traditional approaches focused on…
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations exploring the supercooled dynamics of the Gaussian Core Model in the low- and intermediate-density regimes. In particular, we discuss the transition from the low-density…
The evolution of porous structure, potential energy and local density in binary glasses under oscillatory shear deformation is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. The porous glasses were initially prepared via a rapid thermal…
While diffusion in crystalline solids is quantitatively understood through defect-mediated atomic hops, no comparable quantitative framework exists for glasses. In these systems, the origin of large diffusion activation energies remains…
Many natural and industrial processes rely on constrained transport, such as proteins moving through cells, particles confined in nanocomposite materials or gels, individuals in highly dense collec- tives and vehicular traffic conditions.…
Collective cell migration in response to a chemical cue occurs in many biological processes such as morphogenesis and cancer metastasis. Clusters of migratory cells in these systems are capable of responding to gradients of less than 1%…
The migration behaviors of cancer cells are known to be heterogeneous. However, the interplay between the adhesion interactions, dynamical shape changes and fluid flows in regulating cell migration heterogeneity and plasticity during cancer…
Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…