Related papers: Schools of skyrmions with electrically tunable ela…
Light provides a powerful means of controlling physical behavior of materials but is rarely used to power and guide active matter systems. We demonstrate optical control of liquid crystalline topological solitons dubbed "skyrmions", which…
Topologically nontrivial field configurations called "baby skyrmions" behave like particles and give origins to the field of skyrmionics that promises racetrack memory and other technological applications. Unraveling the non-equilibrium…
We study the universal behavior of a class of active colloids whose design is inspired by the collective dynamics of natural systems like schools of fish and flocks of birds. These colloids, with off-center repulsive interaction sites,…
Topological solitons, such as skyrmions, arise in field theories of systems ranging from Bose-Einstein condensates to optics, particle physics, and cosmology, but they are rarely accessible experimentally. Chiral nematic liquid crystals…
Skyrmions, originally from condensed matter physics, have been widely explored in various physical systems, including soft matter. A crucial challenge in manipulating topological solitary waves like skyrmions is controlling their flow on…
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…
Active colloids and liquid crystals are capable of locally converting the macroscopically-supplied energy into directional motion and promise a host of new applications, ranging from drug delivery to cargo transport at the mesoscale. Here…
Magnetic skyrmions are topological magnetic spin structures exhibiting particle-like behaviour. They are of strong interest from a fundamental viewpoint and for application, where they have potential to act as information carriers in future…
Skyrmions are topological solitons that emerge in many physical contexts. In magnetism, they appear as textures of the spin-density field stabilized by different competing interactions and characterized by a topological charge that counts…
Many living and artificial systems show a similar emergent behavior and collective motions on different scales, starting from swarms of bacteria to synthetic active particles, herds of mammals and crowds of people. What all these systems…
Self-organisation into spatially modulated structures has different nature from phase transition into uniform states. Skyrmions and half-skyrmions (merons) are representatives of such structures and are utilised in designing…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
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…
In equilibrium, the physical properties of matter are set by the interactions between the constituents. In contrast, the energy input of the individual components controls the behavior of synthetic or living active matter. Great progress…
Twisted light carries a non-zero orbital angular momentum, that can be transferred from light to electrons and particles ranging from nanometers to micrometers. Up to now, the interplay between twisted light with dipolar systems has…
Skyrmions are vortex-like textures of magnetic moments found in some magnetically ordered materials. Here we describe the origin of the skyrmion and discuss the experimental realization of skyrmions in magnetic materials, the dynamic…
Magnetic skyrmions are mesmerizing spin textures with peculiar topological and dynamical properties, typically the product of competing interactions in ferromagnets, and with great technological potential [1-5]. Researchers have long…
It is spatial dispersion which is exclusively responsible for the emergence of exchange interaction and magnetic ordering. In contrast, magneto-crystalline anisotropy present in any realistic material brings in a certain non-linearity to…
Polar solitons, i.e., solitonic waves accompanying asymmetry of geometry or phase, have garnered attention in polar systems, such as ferroelectric or magnetoelectric materials, where they play a critical role in topological transitions and…
Emergent nonreciprocity in active matter drives the formation of self-organized states that transcend the behaviors of equilibrium systems. Integrating experiments, theory and simulations, we demonstrate that active solids composed of…