Related papers: Activity driven orientational order in active nema…
We show that the interference between scattering by impurities and by critical spin fluctuations gives rise to anisotropic transport in the Ising-nematic state of the iron pnictides. The effect is closely related to the non-Fermi liquid…
In active nematic liquid crystals activity is able to drive chaotic spatiotemporal flows referred to as active turbulence. Active turbulence has been characterized through theoretical and experimental work as a low Reynolds number…
Using a minimal continuum model, we investigate the interplay between circular confinement and substrate friction in active nematics. Upon increasing the friction from low to high, we observe a dynamical phase transition from a circulating…
Understanding the flow of liquid crystals in microfluidic environments plays an important role in many fields, including device design and microbiology. We perform hybrid lattice-Boltzmann simulations of a nematic liquid crystal flowing…
We numerically study two-dimensional active nematics with periodic activity patterning. For stripes of activity, we observe a transition from two-dimensional to one-dimensional active turbulence as the maximum active force and distance…
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…
Topological defects play a central role in the formation and organization of various biological systems. Historically, such nonequilibrium defects have been mainly studied in the context of homogeneous active nematics. Phase-separated…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
We study the dynamics of an active gel droplet with imposed orientational anchoring (normal or planar) at its surface. We find that if the activity is large enough droplets subject to strong anchoring spontaneously start to rotate, with the…
From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…
We study the instability development during a viscous liquid drop impacting a smooth substrate, using high speed photography. The onset time of the instability highly depends on the surrounding air pressure and the liquid viscosity: it…
We derive the full set of macroscopic equations necessary to describe the dynamics of systems with active polar order in a viscoelastic or elastic background. The active polar order is manifested by a second velocity, whose non-zero modulus…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…
We develop a general continuum mechanics framework for active anisotropic plates within the F\"oppl-von K\'arm\'an limit, incorporating a preferential direction and inelastic active contractions in geometrically nonlinear plate theory.…
In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…
We formulate the statistical dynamics of topological defects in the active nematic phase, formed in two dimensions by a collection of self-driven particles on a substrate. An important consequence of the non-equilibrium drive is the…
To study the impact of active systems on their surroundings, we introduce a model that couples an active nematic fluid to an isotropic substrate fluid via friction. We numerically show that as the active layer develops turbulence, the…
We study the necking of a filament of complex fluid or soft solid subject to uniaxial tensile stretching, under conditions of constant imposed stress and force, by means of linear stability analysis and nonlinear simulations. We demonstrate…
We investigate experimentally the dynamic phase transition of a two-dimensional active nematic layer interfaced with a passive liquid crystal. Under a temperature ramp that leads to the transition of the passive liquid into a highly…