Related papers: Active nematic gels as active relaxing solids
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
We analyze the phase behavior of lyotropic nematic liquid crystals in the self-organizing flow, viz. so called active nematics (AN). Their elastic properties are mutually caused by evolution of topological defects (for instance,…
Simulations employing the continuum model of Gao et al. [Phy. Rev. Fluids, 2 093302 (2017)] are used to study the transport of an object in a closed two-dimensional container by a dense suspension of contractile active agents. For…
We propose a continuum model to describe the molecular alignment in thin nematic shells. By contrast with previous accounts, the two-dimensional free energy, aimed at describing the physics of thin films of nematics deposited on curved…
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…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
Molecules of a nematic liquid crystal respond to an applied magnetic field by reorienting themselves in the direction of the field. Since the dielectric anisotropy of a nematic is small, it takes relatively large fields to elicit a…
In equilibrium, the collective behaviour of particles interacting via steep, short-ranged potentials is well captured by the virial expansion of the free energy at low density. Here, we extend this approach beyond equilibrium to the case of…
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…
We study the asymptotic behavior of global solutions to hydrodynamical systems modeling the nematic liquid crystal flows under kinematic transports for molecules of different shapes. The coupling system consists of Navier-Stokes equations…
The mechanical response of naturally abundant amorphous solids such as gels, jammed grains, and biological tissues are not described by the conventional paradigm of broken symmetry that defines crystalline elasticity. In contrast, the…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
We predict spontaneous nematic order in an ensemble of active force generators with elastic interactions as a minimal model for early nematic alignment of short stress fibers in non-motile, adhered cells. Mean-field theory is formally…
Active nematic fluids exhibit complex dynamics in both bulk and in simple confining geometries. However, complex confining geometries could have substantial impact on active spontaneous flows. Using multiparticle collision dynamics…
We compute effective energies of thin bilayer structures composed by soft nematic elastic-liquid crystals in various geometrical regimes and functional configurations. Our focus is on order-strain interaction in elastic foundations composed…
We study elasticity of spontaneously orientationally-ordered amorphous solids, characterized by a vanishing transverse shear modulus, as realized for example by nematic elastomers and gels. We show that local heterogeneities and elastic…
An irreversible thermodynamical theory of solids is presented where the kinematic quantities are defined in an automatically objective way. Namely, auxiliary elements like reference frame, reference time and reference configuration are…
We investigate similarities in the micro-structural dynamics between externally driven and actively driven nematics. Walls, lines of strong deformations in the director field, and topological defects are characteristic features of an active…
Living materials such as membranes, cytoskeletal assemblies, cell collectives and tissues can often be described as active solids -- materials that are energized from within, with elastic response about a well defined reference…
We study colloidal particles in a nematic-liquid-crystal-filled microfluidic channel and show how elastic interactions between the particle and the channel wall lead to different particle dynamics compared with conventional microfluidics.…