Related papers: Binding self-propelled topological defects in acti…
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 consider evolution of initial disturbances in spatially extended systems with autonomous rhythmic activity, such as the heart. We consider the case when the activity is stable with respect to very smooth (changing little across 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 the structure and dynamics of the interface separating a passive fluid from a microtubule-based active fluid. Turbulent-like active flows power giant interfacial fluctuations, which exhibit pronounced asymmetry between regions of…
Cell layers are often categorized as contractile or extensile active nematics but recent experiments on neural progenitor cells with induced $+1$ topological defects challenge this classification. In a bottom-up approach, we first study a…
From incompressible flows to electrostatics, harmonic functions can provide solutions to many two-dimensional problems and, similarly, the director field of a planar nematic can be determined using complex analysis. We derive a closed-form…
Polar active matter - including animal herds, aggregates of motile cells and active colloids - often forms coordinated migration patterns, such as flocking. This orderly motion can be disrupted by full-integer topological defects…
More physics at the boundaries of a topological lattice remains to be explored for future applications of topological edge states. This work investigates the stability of topological edge states in the presence of a moving impurity. By…
Topological defects are a conspicuous feature of active liquid crystals that have been associated with important morphogenetic transitions in organismal development. Robust development thus requires a tight control of the motion and…
Spatially localised defect structures emerge spontaneously in a hydrodynamic description of an active polar fluid comprising polar 'actin' filaments and 'myosin' motor proteins that (un)bind to filaments and exert active contractile…
We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…
Self-accelerating waves in conservative systems, which usually feature slowly decaying tails, such as Airy waves, have drawn great interest in studies of quantum and classical wave dynamics. They typically appear in linear media, while…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
We propose a general formalism to characterize orientational frustration of smectic liquid crystals in confinement by interpreting the emerging networks of grain boundaries as objects with a topological charge. In a formal idealization,…
We predict the existence and address the stability of two-dimensional surface solitons featuring topologically complex shapes, including dipoles, vortices, and bound states of vortex solitons, at the interface of nonlocal thermal media.…
We provide a minimal model for an active nematic film in contact with both a solid substrate and a passive isotropic fluid, and explore its dynamics in one and two dimensions using a combination of hybrid Lattice Boltzmann simulations and…
It is well established that dilute active dopants can melt an arrested amorphous solid by enhancing cage breaking and accelerating structural relaxation. Yet it remains unclear whether increasing persistence simply amplifies this effective…
Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…
We elucidate the molecular forces leading to assembly of two dimensional membrane-like structures composed of a one rod-length thick monolayer of aligned rods from an immiscible suspension of hard rods and depleting polymers. We perform…
Active nematics are microscopically driven liquid crystals that exhibit dynamical steady states characterized by the creation and annihilation of topological defects. Motivated by experimental realizations of such systems made of biopolymer…