Related papers: Living Liquid Crystals
One objective of active matter science is to unveil principles by which chaotic microscale dynamics could be transformed into useful work. A nematic liquid crystal environment offers a number of possibilities, one of which is a directional…
We study colloidal particle dynamics of a model glass system using confocal and fluorescence microscopy as the sample evolves from a hard-sphere glass to a liquid with attractive interparticle interactions. The transition from hard-sphere…
We view a complex liquid as a network of bonds connecting each particle to its nearest neighbors; the dynamics of this network is a chain of discrete events signaling particles rearrangements. Within this picture, we studied a…
The field of active matter explores the behaviors of self propelled agents out of equilibrium, with active suspensions, such as swimming bacteria in solutions, serving as impactful models. These systems exhibit spatio-temporal patterns akin…
A drop bouncing on a vertically-vibrated surface may self-propel forward by standing waves and travels along a fluid interface. This system called walking drop forms a non-quantum wave-particle association at the macroscopic scale. The…
The persistent motility of the individual constituents in microbial suspensions represents a prime example of so-called active matter systems. Cells consume energy, exert forces and move, overall releasing the constraints of equilibrium…
Micro-swimmers such as bacteria perform random walks known as run-and-tumbles to move up chemo-attractant gradients and as a result aggregate with others. It is also known that such micro-swimmers can self-organize into macroscopic patterns…
Incorporating the inherent heterogeneity of living systems into models of active nematics is essential to provide a more realistic description of biological processes such as bacterial growth, cell dynamics and tissue development.…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
This paper summarizes a talk presented at the April NATO ASI on Spatiotemporal Chaos in Complex Fluids, in Santa Fe, NM. The paper gives reasons that make complex fluids good material systems for conducting experiments on pattern formation…
The origin of water's anomalous behavior remains a central open problem in the physical sciences and is often attributed to a liquid-liquid transition (LLT) between high- and low-density liquid states deep in the supercooled regime.…
In systems as diverse as migrating mammals to road traffic, crowding acts to inhibit efficient collective movement. Bacteria, however, are observed to move in very dense groups containing billions of individuals without causing the gridlock…
Self-propelled colloidal objects, such as motile bacteria or synthetic microswimmers, have microscopically irreversible individual dynamics - a feature they share with all living systems. The incoherent behaviour of individual swimmers can…
The emergence of long-range spatiotemporal order from intrinsic chaos is a central challenge in far-from-equilibrium physics. In active fluids, such as cytoskeletal networks driving cellular motion, self-generated flows typically produce…
Inspired by the observation of intricate and beautifully dynamic patterns generated by food coloring on clean glass slides, we have investigated the behavior of propylene glycol and water droplets on high energy surfaces. In this fluid…
The encapsulation of active particles, such as bacteria or active colloids, inside a droplet gives rise to nontrivial shape dynamics and droplet motility. To understand this behavior, we derive an asymptotic solution for the fluid flow…
We report a novel form of convection in suspensions of the bioluminiscent marine bacterium $Photobacterium~phosphoreum$. Suspensions of these bacteria placed in a chamber open to the air create persistent luminiscent plumes most easily…
Living systems continuously sense, integrate, and act on chemical information using multiscale biochemical networks whose dynamics are inherently nonlinear, adaptive, and energy-efficient. Yet, most attempts to harness such "wetware" for…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
Active gels play an important role in biology and in inspiring biomimetic active materials, due to their ability to change shape, size and create their own morphology; the relevant mechanics behind these changes is driven by…