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"Active nematics" are orientationally ordered but apolar fluids composed of interacting constituents individually powered by an internal source of energy. When activity exceeds a system-size dependent threshold, spatially uniform active…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-11-08 Richard Green , John Toner , Vincenzo Vitelli

Motivated by the experimental ability to produce monodisperse particles in microfluidic devices, we study theoretically the hydrodynamic stability of driven and active crystals. We first recall the theoretical tools allowing to quantify the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2012-09-06 Nicolas Desreumaux , Nicolas Florent , Eric Lauga , Denis Bartolo

In vitro reconstituted active systems, such as the ATP-driven microtubule bundle suspension developed by the Dogic group, provide a fertile testing ground for elucidating the phenomenology of active liquid crystalline states. Controlling…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-01-04 Pau Guillamat , Jordi Ignés-Mullol , Suraj Shankar , M. Cristina Marchetti , Francesc Sagués

Non-motile active matter exhibits a wide range of non-equilibrium collective phenomena yet examples are crucially lacking in the literature. We present a microscopic model inspired by the bacteria {\it Neisseria Meningitidis} in which…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-09-21 Henry Alston , Andrew O. Parry , Raphaël Voituriez , Thibault Bertrand

Active matter comprises individual units that convert energy into mechanical motion. In many examples, such as bacterial systems and biofilament assays, constituent units are elongated and can give rise to local nematic orientational order.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-11-17 He Li , Xia-qing Shi , Mingji Huang , Xiao Chen , Mingfeng Xiao , Chenli Liu , Hugues Chate , H. P. Zhang

Microfluidics has enabled a revolution in the manipulation of small volumes of fluids. Controlling flows at larger scales and faster rates, or $\textit{macrofluidics}$, has broad applications but involves the unique complexities of inertial…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2021-05-24 Quynh M. Nguyen , Joanna Abouezzi , Leif Ristroph

A hallmark of bacteria is their so-called "run-and-tumble" motion, consisting of a sequence of linear directed "runs" and random rotations that constantly alternate due to biochemical feedback. It plays a crucial role in the ability of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-02-21 Gordei Anchutkin , Viktor Holubec , Frank Cichos

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-01-15 Urvi Mahendra Bora , Mohd Suhail Rizvi

Active liquid crystals exert nonequilibrium stresses on their surroundings through constant consumption of energy, giving rise to dynamical steady states not present in equilibrium. The paradigmatic example of an active liquid crystal is a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-02-12 Paarth Gulati , Fernando Caballero , Itamar Kolvin , Zhihong You , M. Cristina Marchetti

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-06-21 Pau Guillamat , Jordi Ignés-Mullol , Francesc Sagués

Active nematics are microscopically driven liquid crystals that exhibit dynamical steady states characterized by the creation and annihilation of topological defects. Motivated by experimental realizations of such systems made of biopolymer…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-09-05 Abhijeet Joshi , Elias Putzig , Aparna Baskaran , Michael Hagan

A steady fluid flow, called microstreaming, can be generated in the vicinity of a micro-bubble excited by ultrasound. In this article, we use this phenomenon to assemble and power a microfabricated rotor at rotation speeds as high as 625…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2009-12-17 Jonathan Kao , Xiaolin Wang , John Warren , Jie Xu , Daniel Attinger

The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…

Very small synthetic motors that make use of chemical reactions to propel themselves in solution hold promise for new applications in the development of new materials, science and medicine. The prospect of such potential applications, along…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-05-17 Mu-Jie Huang , Jeremy Schofield , Raymond Kapral

Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-06-19 Mengshi Wei , Daniela J. Kraft

A remarkable feat of active matter physics is that systems as diverse as collections of self-propelled particles, nematics mixed with molecular motors, and interacting robots can all be described by symmetry-based continuum theories. These…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-04-28 Jack Binysh , Guido Baardink , Jonas Veenstra , Corentin Coulais , Anton Souslov

The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-03-11 Fernando Martínez-Pedrero , Francisco Ortega , Ramón G. Rubio , Carles Calero

Synthetic turbulence is a relevant tool to study complex astrophysical and space plasma environments inaccessible by direct simulation. However, conventional models lack intermittent coherent structures, which are essential in realistic…

Space Physics · Physics 2024-05-08 Jeremiah Lübke , Frederic Effenberger , Mike Wilbert , Horst Fichtner , Rainer Grauer

We demonstrate that collective turbulent-like motion in a bacterial bath can power and steer directed transport of mesoscopic carriers through the suspension. In our experiments and simulations, a microwedge-like "bulldozer" draws energy…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-04-21 Andreas Kaiser , Anton Peshkov , Andrey Sokolov , Borge ten Hagen , Hartmut Löwen , Igor S. Aranson

In the cellular phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, molecular motors carrying cargo along a network of microtubules entrain the surrounding fluid. The piconewton forces produced by individual motors are sufficient to deform long…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-01-20 David B. Stein , Gabriele De Canio , Eric Lauga , Michael J. Shelley , Raymond E. Goldstein