Related papers: Dancing disclinations in confined active nematics

Swimming in low-Reynolds-number fluids requires the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and centrosymmetry. Microswimmers, often with asymmetric shapes, exhibit nonreciprocal motions or exploit nonequilibrium processes to propel. The role of…

Topological defects play a key role in two-dimensional active nematics, and a transient role in two-dimensional active polar fluids. In this paper, we study both the transient and long-time behavior of defects in two-dimensional active…

Kinetic and hydrodynamic theories are widely employed for describing the collective behaviour of active matter systems. At the fluctuating level, these have been obtained from explicit coarse-graining procedures in the limit where each…

Branched flow governs the transition from ballistic to diffusive motion of waves and conservative particle flows in spatially correlated random or complex environments. It occurs in many physical systems from micrometer to interstellar…

We show that the dominant mode of alignment plays an important role in dry active nematics,leading to two dynamical sub-classes defined by the nature of the instability of the nematic bands that characterize, in these systems, the…

We consider a microscopic field theoretical approach for interacting active nematic particles. With only steric interactions the self-propulsion strength in such systems can lead to different collective behaviour, e.g., synchronized…

Liquid crystalline media mediate interactions between suspended particles and confining geometries, which not only has potential to guide patterning and bottom-up colloidal assembly, but can also control colloidal migration in microfluidic…

Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…

Active nematic systems consist of rod-like internally driven subunits that interact with one another to form large-scale coherent flows. They are important examples of far-from-equilibrium fluids, which exhibit a wealth of nonlinear…

Remarkably, even under negligible inertia, the addition of microstructural agents can generate chaotic flow fields. Such behavior can arise in polymer solutions, leading to elastic turbulence, or from active, self-driven particles, which…

We study flows generated within a two-dimensional corner by the chemical activity of the confining boundaries. Catalytic reactions at the surfaces induce diffusioosmotic motion of the viscous fluid throughout the domain. The presence of…

One of the most distinctive hallmarks of many-body systems far from equilibrium is the spontaneous emergence of order under conditions where disorder would be plausibly expected. Here, we report on the self-transition between ordered and…

Atmospheric flows exhibit long-range spatiotemporal correlations manifested as the fractal geometry to the global cloud cover pattern concomitant with inverse power-law form for power spectra of temporal fluctuations of all scales ranging…

Despite their importance in many biological, ecological and physical processes, microorganismal fluid flows under tight confinement have not been investigated experimentally. Strong screening of Stokelets in this geometry suggests that the…

The actin cytoskeleton is remarkably adaptable and multifunctional. It often organizes into nematic bundles such as contractile rings or stress fibers. However, how a uniform and isotropic actin gel self-organizes into dense nematic bundles…

Solitary waves, dubbed "solitons", are special types of waves that propagate for an infinite distance under ideal conditions. These waves are ubiquitously found in nature such as typhoon or neuron signals. Yet, their artificial generation…

Active nematics are fluids in which the components have nematic symmetry and are driven out of equilibrium due to the microscopic generation of an active stress. When the active stress is high, it drives flows in the nematic and can lead to…

Knots are entangled structures that cannot be untangled without a cut. Topological stability of knots is one of the many examples of their important properties that can be used in information storage and transfer. Knot dynamics is important…

We use numerical simulations and linear stability analysis to study the dynamics of an active liquid crystal film on a substrate in the regime where the passive system would be isotropic. Extensile activity builds up local orientational…

Topological defects, which are singular points in a director field, play a major role in shaping active systems. Here, we experimentally study topological defects and the flow patterns around them, that are formed during the highly rapid…