Related papers: Optimal Control of Active Nematics
Being intrinsically nonequilibrium, active materials can potentially perform functions that would be thermodynamically forbidden in passive materials. However, active systems have diverse local attractors that correspond to distinct…
Active nematics, formed from a liquid crystalline suspension of active force dipoles, are a paradigmatic active matter system whose study provides insights into how chemical driving produces the cellular mechanical forces essential for…
Living things enact control of non-equilibrium, dynamical structures through complex biochemical networks, accomplishing spatiotemporally-orchestrated physiological tasks such as cell division, motility, and embryogenesis. While the exact…
Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle contraction. In this work, we investigate the nature of active…
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…
Active nematics are an important new paradigm in soft condensed matter systems. They consist of rod-like components with an internal driving force pushing them out of equilibrium. The resulting fluid motion exhibits chaotic advection, in…
The structure and dynamics of important biological quasi-two-dimensional systems, ranging from cytoskeletal gels to tissues, are controlled by nematic order, flow, defects and activity. Continuum hydrodynamic descriptions combined with…
Active many-body systems composed of many interacting degrees of freedom often operate out of equilibrium, giving rise to non-trivial emergent behaviors which can be functional in both evolved and engineered contexts. This naturally…
Understanding the complex patterns in space-time exhibited by active systems has been the subject of much interest in recent times. Complementing this forward problem is the inverse problem of controlling active matter. Here we use optimal…
The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…
Two-dimensional active nematics are often modeled using phenomenological continuum theories that describe the dynamics of the nematic director and fluid velocity through partial differential equations (PDEs). While these models provide a…
Confinement can be used to systematically tame turbulent dynamics occurring in active fluids. Although periodic channels are the simplest geometries to study confinement numerically, the corresponding experimental realizations require…
Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…
Active nematics are dense systems of rodlike particles that consume energy to drive motion at the level of the individual particles. They exist in natural systems like biological tissues and artificial materials such as suspensions of…
A major challenge in the study of active systems is to harness their non-equilibrium dynamics into useful work. We address this by showing how to design colloids with controllable spontaneous propulsion or rotation when immersed in active…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…
Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…