Related papers: Driven Topological Transitions in Active Nematic F…
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…
We analyze dynamics of 3D coreless vortices in superfluid films covering porous substrates. The 3D vortex dynamics is derived from the 2D dynamics of the film. The motion of a 3D vortex is a sequence of jumps between neighboring substrate…
We report on the observation of the rearrangement of vortices in the ns time scale following a fast magnetic field variation due to selective local heating of a high Tc superconducting film. Detailed simulations describing the measured…
Active stresses, which are collectively generated by the motion of energy-consuming rod-like constituents, generate chaotic autonomous flows. Controlling active stresses in space and time is an essential prerequisite for controlling the…
Stabilizing defects in liquid-crystal systems is crucial for many physical processes and applications ranging from functionalizing liquid-crystal textures to recently reported command of chaotic behaviors of active matters. In this work, we…
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…
Thin-film dewetting is classically governed by an adhesion-mediated spinodal instability in which curvature-driven diffusion controls post-rupture coarsening. We show that internal activity fundamentally restructures this instability. Using…
Morphological trends in growing colonies of living cells are at the core of physiological and evolutionary processes. Using active gel equations, which include cell division, we show that shape changes during the growth can be regulated by…
Spatiotemporal patterns in multicellular systems are important to understanding tissue dynamics, for instance, during embryonic development and disease. Here, we use a multiphase field model to study numerically the behavior of a…
The duality between deformations of elastic bodies and non-inertial flows in viscous liquids has been a guiding principle in decades of research. However, this duality is broken when a spheroidal or other doubly-curved liquid film is…
We develop an approximate, analytical model for the velocity of defects in active nematics by combining recent results for the velocity of topological defects in nematic liquid crystals with the flow field generated from individual defects…
How do topological defects affect the degree of order in active matter? To answer this question we investigate an agent-based model of self-propelled particles, which accounts for polar alignment and short-ranged repulsive interactions. For…
We consider active nematodynamics on deformable surfaces. Based on a thermodynamically consistent surface Beris-Edwards model we add nematic activity and focus on the emerging additional coupling mechanism between the nematic field, the…
A non-relativistic scalar field coupled minimally to electromagnetism supports in the presence of a homogeneous background electric charge density the existence of smooth, finite-energy topologically stable flux vortices. The static…
We study colloidal particles in a nematic-liquid-crystal-filled microfluidic channel and show how elastic interactions between the particle and the channel wall lead to different particle dynamics compared with conventional microfluidics.…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
A wide range of living and artificial active matter exists in close contact with substrates and under strong confinement, where in addition to dipolar active stresses, quadrupolar active stresses can become important. Here, we numerically…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
We discuss instabilities of fluid films of nanoscale thickness, with a particular focus on films where the destabilising mechanism allows for linear instability, metastability, and absolute stability. Our study is motivated by nematic…
The work reported in my doctoral thesis is an experimental study of vortex dynamics and phase transitions in thin films of type II superconductors using scanning tunneling spectroscopy, low frequency ac susceptibility measurements and…