Related papers: Understanding dense active nematics from microscop…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…
Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…
Topological defects in systems with liquid-crystalline order are crucial in determining their large-scale properties. In active systems, they are known to have properties impossible at equilibrium: for example, $+1/2$ defects in…
We present a novel framework for the study of disclinations in two-dimensional active nematic liquid crystals, and topological defects in general. The order tensor formalism is used to calculate exact multi-particle solutions of the…
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…
We adapt the Halperin-Mazenko formalism to analyze two-dimensional active nematics coupled to a generic fluid flow. The governing hydrodynamic equations lead to evolution laws for nematic topological defects and their corresponding density…
We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematic film is topologically constraint. These topological constraints allow to control the non-equilibrium dynamics of the active system. We consider ellipsoidal shapes for…
We introduce a two-dimensional active nematic with quenched disorder. We write the coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations of motion for slow variables, viz. density, and orientation. Disorder strength is tuned from zero to large values.…
Inspired by recent experiments that highlight the role of nematic defects in the morphogenesis of epithelial tissues, we develop a minimal framework to study the dynamics of an active curved surface driven by its nematic texture. Allowing…
Specific features of two-dimensional nematodynamics give rise to shortfalls of the tensor representation of the nematic order parameter commonly used in computations, especially in theory of active matter. The alternative representation in…
The morphology of a mixture made of a polar active gel immersed in an isotropic passive fluid is studied numerically. Lattice Boltzmann method is adopted to solve the Navier-Stokes equation and coupled to a finite-difference scheme used to…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
We study emergent dynamics in a viscous drop subject to interfacial nematic activity. Using hydrodynamic simulations, we show how the interplay of nematodynamics, activity-driven flows and surface deformations gives rise to a sequence of…
Topological defects are at the root of the large-scale organization of liquid crystals. In two-dimensional active nematics, two classes of topological defects of charges $\pm 1/2$ are known to play a major role due to active stresses.…
Starting from a dynamic tensor model about two second-order tensors, we derive the frame hydrodynamics for the biaxial nematic phase using the Hilbert expansion. The coefficients in the frame model are derived from those in the tensor…
The persistent dynamics in systems out of equilibrium, particularly those characterized by annihilation and creation of topological defects, is known to involve complicated spatiotemporal processes and is deemed difficult to control. Here…
I put forward a continuum theory for active nematic gels, defined as fluids or suspensions of orientable rodlike objects endowed with active dynamics, that is based on symmetry arguments and compatibility with thermodynamics. The starting…
The dynamics of dry active matter have implications for a diverse collection of biological phenomena spanning a range of length and time scales, such as animal flocking, cell tissue dynamics, and swarming of inserts and bacteria. Uniting…
Active nematic fluids confined in narrow channels generate spontaneous flows when the activity is sufficiently intense. Recently, it was shown that if the molecular anchoring at the channel walls is conflicting flows are initiated even in…