Related papers: Schools of skyrmions with electrically tunable ela…
Active systems of self-propelled agents, e.g., birds, fish, and bacteria, can organize their collective motion into myriad autonomous behaviors. Ubiquitous in nature and across length scales, such phenomena are also amenable to artificial…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
Topological spin textures emerging in magnetic materials usually appear in crystalline states. A long-standing dilemma is whether we should understand these emergent crystals as gathering particles or coupling waves, the answer of which…
Active matter, composed of self-propelled entities, forms a wide class of out-of-equilibrium systems that display striking collective behaviors among which the so-called active turbulence where spatially and time disordered flow patterns…
Collections of interacting, self-propelled particles have been extensively studied as minimal models of many living and synthetic systems from bird flocks to active colloids. However, the influence of active rotations in the absence of…
Systems composed of strongly interacting self-propelled particles can form a spontaneously flowing polar active fluid. The study of the connection between the microscopic dynamics of a single such particle and the macroscopic dynamics of…
The self-organised motion of vast numbers of creatures in a single direction is a spectacular example of emergent order. We recreate this phenomenon using actuated non-living components. We report here that millimetre-sized tapered rods,…
Remarkably, even under negligible inertia, the addition of microstructural agents can generate chaotic flow fields. Such behavior can arise in polymer solutions, leading to elastic turbulence, or from active, self-driven particles, which…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
Topological wave structures, such as vortices and skyrmions, appear in a variety of quantum and classical wave fields, including optics and acoustics. In particular, optical vortices have found numerous applications ranging from quantum…
Soap bubbles form when blowing air through a suspended thin film of soapy water and this phenomenon entertains children and adults alike. The formation of soap bubbles from thin films is accompanied by topological transitions, and thus the…
Magnetic skyrmions are localized, topologically protected spin-structures that have been proposed for storing or processing information due to their intriguing dynamical and transport properties. Important in terms of applications is the…
We study numerically the behaviour of a mixture of a passive isotropic fluid and an active polar gel, in the presence of a surfactant favouring emulsification. Focussing on parameters for which the underlying free energy favours the…
Topology establishes a unifying framework for a diverse range of scientific areas including particle physics, cosmology, and condensed matter physics. One of the most fascinating manifestations of topology in the context of condensed matter…
Using both atomistic and particle-based simulations, we investigate the current-driven dynamics of skyrmions on two-dimensional periodic substrates when there are multiple skyrmions per substrate minimum. At zero drive, the system forms…
Population heterogeneity is ubiquitous among active living systems, but little is known about its role in determining their spatial organization and large-scale dynamics. Combining evidence from synthetic active fluids assembled from…
Despite their inherent non-equilibrium nature, living systems can self-organize in highly ordered collective states that share striking similarities with the thermodynamic equilibrium phases of conventional condensed matter and fluid…
Real-space topological magnetic structures such as skyrmions and merons are promising candidates for information storage and transport. However, the microscopic mechanisms that control their formation and evolution are still not clear.…
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 solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…