Related papers: Microbial Active Matter: A Topological Framework
Biomolecular structures are assemblies of emergent anisotropic building modules such as uniaxial helices or biaxial strands. We provide an approach to understanding a marginally compact phase of matter that is occupied by proteins and DNA.…
Topological defects are singularities within a field that cannot be removed by continuous transformations. The definition of these irregularities requires an ordered reference configuration, calling into question whether they exist in…
Defects, and in particular topological defects, are architectural motifs that play a crucial role in natural materials. Here we provide a systematic strategy to introduce such defects in mechanical metamaterials. We first present…
In ecology, climate and other fields, (sub)systems have been identified that can transition into a qualitatively different state when a critical threshold or tipping point in a driving process is crossed. An understanding of those tipping…
Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental in living and engineering systems. This has stimulated the new field of active matter in recent years, which focuses on the physical aspects of propulsion mechanisms, and on motility-induced…
Topological invariants have proved useful for analyzing emergent function as they characterize a property of the entire system, and are insensitive to local details, disorder, and noise. They support boundary states, which reduce the system…
We study the dynamics of topological defects in continuum theories governed by a free energy minimization principle, building on our recently developed framework [Romano J, Mahault B and Golestanian R 2023 J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp.…
Active matter often simultaneously exhibits different kinds of orientational order and, in many cases of biological interest, undergoes continuous material renewal. In renewing nematopolar fluids we find stable topological strings,…
Non-equilibrium dynamics of topological defects can be used as a fundamental propulsion mechanism in microscopic active matter. Here, we demonstrate swimming of topological defect-propelled colloidal particles in (passive) nematic fluids…
Soft particles such as microgels and core-shell particles can undergo significant and anisotropic deformations when adsorbed to a liquid interface. This, in turn, leads to a complex phase behavior upon compression. Here we develop a…
The language and methods of algebraic topology, particularly homotopy theory, have been extensively used in the study of the identification, the classification and the evolution of defects. Topological methods provide the means for the…
The fields of mechanobiology and biomechanics are expanding our understanding of the complex behavior of soft biological tissues across multiple scales. Given the intricate connection between tissue microstructure and its macroscale…
Topological defects play a central role in the physics of many materials, including magnets, superconductors and liquid crystals. In active fluids, defects become autonomous particles that spontaneously propel from internal active stresses…
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…
Understanding the dependence and interplay between architecture and function in biological networks has great relevance to disease progression, biological fabrication and biological systems in general. We propose methods to assess the…
While ubiquitous, energy redistribution remains a poorly understood facet of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of biomolecules. At the molecular level, finite-size effects, pronounced nonlinearities, and ballistic processes produce behavior…
Activity can organize matter in unique configurations inaccessible to equilibrium systems, including a sundry of spiraling shapes seen in nature that range from galaxies to living tissues to fossilized stromatolites. How these dynamic yet…
Mechanical stresses are increasingly found to be associated with various biological functionalities. At the same time, topological defects are being identified across a diverse range of biological systems and are points of localized…
We introduce structural heterogeneity, a new topological characteristic for semi-ordered materials that captures their degree of organisation at a mesoscopic level and tracks their time-evolution, ultimately detecting the order-disorder…
The complexity of condensed matter arises from emergent behaviors that cannot be understood by analyzing individual constituents in isolation. While traditional condensed-matter approaches-developed primarily for ideal crystalline…