Related papers: Competing Active and Passive Interactions Drive Am…
Wave-exciting is a universal phenomenon in physical and biological excitable systems. Here we show that colloidal systems of Quincke rollers which are driven periodically can condense into active liquids and active crystals, in which waves…
Self-organization phenomena in ensembles of self-propelled particles open pathways to the synthesis of new dynamic states not accessible by traditional equilibrium processes. The challenge is to develop a set of principles that facilitate…
Many active biological particles, such as swimming microorganisms or motor-proteins, do work on their environment by going though a periodic sequence of shapes. Interactions between particles can lead to the phase-synchronization of their…
Dense suspensions of self-propelled rod-like particles exhibit a fascinating variety of non-equilibrium phenomena. By means of computer simulations of a minimal model for rigid self-propelled colloidal rods with variable shape we explore…
Catalytically active colloids maintain non-equilibrium conditions in which they produce and deplete chemicals and hence effectively act as sources and sinks of molecules. While individual colloids that are symmetrically coated do not…
Micron-sized self-propelled (active) particles can be considered as model systems for characterizing more complex biological organisms like swimming bacteria or motile cells. We produce asymmetric microswimmers by soft lithography and study…
Cilia and flagella in biological systems often show large scale cooperative behaviors such as the synchronization of their beats in "metachronal waves". These are beautiful examples of emergent dynamics in biology, and are essential for…
With the aim of understanding the emergence of collective motion from local interactions of organisms in a "noisy" environment, we study biologically inspired, inherently non-equilibrium models consisting of self-propelled particles. In…
Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic and bacterial active matter. Whether collective crystallization phenomena can occur in groups…
Light-activated self-propelled colloids are synthesized and their active motion is studied using optical microscopy. We propose a versatile route using different photoactive materials, and demonstrate a multiwavelength activation and…
Field-induced assembly of colloidal particles into structures of desired configurations is extremely relevant from the viewpoint of producing field-assembled micro-swimmers and reconfigurable smart materials. However, the behaviour of…
A system of active colloidal particles driven by harmonic potentials to oscillate about the vertices of a regular polygon, with hydrodynamic coupling between all particles, is described by a piece-wise linear model which exhibits various…
Colloidal probes immersed in an active bath have been found to behave like active particles themselves. Here, we use coarse-grained simulations to investigate the mechanisms behind this behavior. We find that the active motion of the…
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
We study the dynamical steady-states of a monolayer of chemically active self-phoretic colloids as a function of packing fraction and self-propulsion speed by means of Brownian dynamics simulations. We focus on the case that a chemical…
Active transport of biomolecular condensates and cell migration in collectives are fundamental to development, homeostasis, and processes such as cancer progression, wound healing, and infection response. Yet how these assemblies are…
We study the collective motion of confined spherical microswimmers such as active colloids which we model by so-called squirmers. To simulate hydrodynamic flow fields including thermal noise, we use the method of multi-particle collision…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
An active colloid is a suspension of particles that transduce free energy from their environment and use the energy to engage in intrinsically non-equilibrium activities such as growth, replication and self-propelled motility. An obvious…
From the formation of animal flocks to the emergence of coordinate motion in bacterial swarms, at all scales populations of motile organisms display coherent collective motion. This consistent behavior strongly contrasts with the difference…