Related papers: Nemato-elastic crawlers
A quantitative understanding of organism-level behavior requires predictive models that can capture the richness of behavioral phenotypes, yet are simple enough to connect with underlying mechanistic processes. Here we investigate the…
The millimeter-long soil-dwelling nematode {\it C. elegans} propels itself by producing undulations that propagate along its body and turns by assuming highly curved shapes. According to our recent study [PLoS ONE \textbf{7}, e40121 (2012)]…
Cholesteric elastomers possess a macroscopic ``phase chirality'' as the director n rotates in a helical fashion along an optical axis $z$ and can be described by a chiral order parameter. This parameter can be tuned by changing the helix…
The cytoskeleton is an inhomogeneous network of semi-flexible filaments, which are involved in a wide variety of active biological processes. Although the cytoskeletal filaments can be very stiff and embedded in a dense and cross-linked…
The behavior of a colloidal suspension of rod-like {\it fd} viruses in the nematic phase, subjected to steady state and transient shear flows is studied. The monodisperse nature of these rods combined with relatively small textural…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
The dynamics of filaments in flow are central to understanding a wide range of biological and soft-matter systems, yet their behavior under time-dependent forcing remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate the long-time dynamics of…
When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…
We introduce a minimal model for a collection of self-propelled apolar active particles, also called as `active nematic', on a two-dimensional substrate and study the order-disorder transition with the variation of density. The particles…
When some granular material contained into a silo is pushed upwards with a piston, an irregular stick-slip motion of the system of grains is observed. We show how one can adapt the `Scalar Arching Model' -- proposed as a model for giant…
We review the depinning and nonequilibrium phases of collectively interacting particle systems driven over random or periodic substrates. This type of system is relevant to vortices in type-II superconductors, sliding charge density waves,…
We investigate Isotropic - Nematic transition in liquid crystal elastomers employing non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo techniques. We consider a lattice model of a liquid elastomer and Selinger-Jeon-Ratna Hamiltonian which accounts for…
Cells undergo dramatic morphological changes during embryogenesis, yet how these changes affect the formation of ordered tissues remains elusive. Here, we show that a phase transition leading to the formation of a nematic liquid crystal…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
We investigate the possibility of a striped inhomoegenous phase occurring as an electronic system with an order parameter linearly coupled to the elastic degrees of freedom is tuned through the electronic phase transition. We find that in…
In microtubule-based active nematics, motor-driven extensile motion of microtubule bundles powers chaotic large-scale dynamics. We quantify the interfilament sliding motion both in isolated bundles and in a dense active nematic. The…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
We report experimental and theoretical results on the flexoelectric instability and crossover between flexoelectric domains and electroconvection in a hybrid aligned nematic MBBA under d.c. voltage. At threshold a spatially periodic…
We discuss the stick-slip motion of an elastic block sliding along a rigid substrate. We argue that for a given external shear stress this system shows a discontinuous nonequilibrium transition from a uniform stick state to uniform sliding…