Related papers: Osmosis, from molecular insights to large-scale ap…
Despite much current interest in active matter, little is known about osmosis in active systems. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate how active solutes perturb osmotic steady states. We find that solute activity increases…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is used to shed light on present-day puzzles in cosmology. The universal law, given as an equation of motion, describes diverse systems when consuming free energy via various mechanisms to attain stationary…
The mobility of particles in fluid membranes is a fundamental aspect of many biological processes. In a 1975 paper [1], Saffman and Delbr\"uck demonstrated how the presence of external Stokesian solvents is crucial in regularising the…
We prove local well-posedness for the Muskat problem on the half-plane, which models motion of an interface between two fluids of distinct densities (e.g., oil and water) in a porous medium (e.g., an aquifer) that sits atop an impermeable…
We focus on the study of the processes undergone by a perfect gas when the external pressure is suddenly modified. The analysis shows that, from the second law perspective, there is a non-evident asymmetry between the processes of…
We consider a suspension of active rigid particles (swimmers) in a steady Stokes flow, where particles are distributed according to a stationary ergodic random process, and we study its homogenization in the macroscopic limit. A key point…
We use dedicated microfluidic devices to expose soft hydrogel particles to a rapid change in the externally applied osmotic pressure and observe a non-monotonic response: After an initial rapid compression the particle slowly reswells to…
Viscosity, the internal friction of fluids, is among the most consequential yet underappreciated properties in physics. This paper explores what would happen if viscosity vanished from all fluids while other material properties remained…
Swimming is ubiquitous in nature and crucial for the survival of a wide range of organisms. The physics of swimming at the viscosity-dominated microscale and inertia-dominated macroscale is well studied. However, in between lies a…
We consider the dynamics of a two-dimensional incompressible perfect fluid on a M\"obius strip embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$. The vorticity-streamfunction formulation of the Euler equations is derived from an exterior-calculus form of the…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
The nature of emergent collective behaviors of moving physical agents interacting with their neighborhood is a long-standing open issue in physical and biological systems alike. This calls for studies on the control of synchronization and…
Unlike conventional optics, plasmonics enables unrivalled concentration of optical energy well beyond the diffraction limit of light. However, a significant part of this energy is dissipated as heat. Plasmonic losses present a major hurdle…
Receptor-mediated endocytosis requires that the energy of adhesion overcomes the deformation energy of the plasma membrane. The resulting driving force is balanced by dissipative forces, leading to deterministic dynamical equations. While…
We perform experiments on the sloshing dynamics of liquids in a rectangular container submitted to an impulse. We show that when foam is placed on top of the liquid the oscillations of the free interface are significantly damped. The…
Applications such as digital microfluidics and bio-diagnostics rely on droplet locomotion. A prominent example of such motion is durotaxis, a phenomenon that requires a stiffness gradient along a surface for the transport of liquids, cells,…
Self-chemophoresis is an appealing and quite successful interpretation of the motility exhibited by certain chemically active colloidal particles suspended in a solution of their "fuel": the particle has a phoretic response to…
Molecules at the air-water interface often form inhomogeneous layers in which domains of different densities are separated by sharp interfaces. Complex interfacial pattern formation may occur through the competition of short- and long-range…
Transport of fermions is central in many fields of physics. Electron transport runs modern technology, defining states of matter such as superconductors and insulators, and electron spin, rather than charge, is being explored as a new…
The application of a temperature gradient along a fluid-solid interface generates stresses in the fluid causing "thermo-osmotic" flow. Much of the understanding of this phenomenon is based on Derjaguin's work relating thermo-osmotic flows…