Related papers: Multi-defect Dynamics in Active Nematics

A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…

Specific features of two-dimensional nematodynamics give rise to shortfalls of the tensor representation of the nematic order parameter commonly used in computations, especially in theory of active matter. The alternative representation in…

Hydrodynamic theories effectively describe many-body systems out of equilibrium in terms of a few macroscopic parameters. However, such hydrodynamic parameters are difficult to derive from microscopics. Seldom is this challenge more…

Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…

We describe a numerical investigation of a continuum model of an active nematic, concentrating on the regime of active turbulence. Results are presented for the effect of three parameters, activity, elastic constant and rotational diffusion…

We study two models of overdamped self-propelled disks in two dimensions, with and without aligning interactions. Active mesoscale flows leading to chaotic advection emerge in both models in the homogeneous dense fluid away from dynamical…

The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…

Active nematics, in their pure form, have demonstrated a plethora of dynamic and steady state behaviors, including large-scale dynamic structures, collective flows, and intricate multi-spatial temporal dynamics. This complexity further…

Understanding active matter has led to new perspectives on biophysics and non-equilibrium dynamics. However, the development of numerical tools for simulating active fluids capable of incorporating non-trivial boundaries or inclusions has…

We show that "dry" active nematics, e.g. collections of shaken elongated granular particles, exhibit large-scale spatiotemporal chaos made of interacting dense, ordered, band-like structures in a parameter region including the linear onset…

Incorporating the inherent heterogeneity of living systems into models of active nematics is essential to provide a more realistic description of biological processes such as bacterial growth, cell dynamics and tissue development.…

In pulsating active matter, topological defects are motile despite the absence of any macroscopic flows and microscopic self-propulsion. We reveal that this motility arises from a ratchet effect: the mechanochemical coupling between local…

Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…

Liquid crystals inevitably possess topological defect excitations generated through boundary conditions, applied fields or in quenches to the ordered phase. In equilibrium pairs of defects coarsen and annihilate as the uniform ground state…

Efficient nutrient mixing is crucial for the survival of bacterial colonies and other living systems. This raises the question of whether the optimization of mixing through the emergence of active turbulent motion in bacterial swarms played…

Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…

We construct the equations of motion for the coupled dynamics of order parameter and concentration for the nematic phase of driven particles on a solid surface, and show that they imply (i) giant number fluctuations, with a standard…

We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…

Topological defects are fundamental to the collective dynamics of non-equilibrium systems and in active matter, mediating spontaneous flows, dynamic self-organization, and emergent pattern formation. Here, we reveal critical states in…

From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…