Related papers: Motile dislocations knead odd crystals into whorls
Colloidal particles dispersed in a partially ordered medium, such as a liquid crystal (LC) phase, disturb its alignment and are subject to elastic forces. These forces are long-ranged, anisotropic and tunable through temperature or external…
Micropolar fluid theory, an extension of classical Newtonian fluid dynamics, incorporates angular velocities and rotational inertias and has long been a foundational framework for describing granular flows. We propose a macroscopic model of…
Transitions from turbulence to order are studied experimentally in thin fluid layers and magnetically confined toroidal plasma. It is shown that turbulence self-organizes through the mechanism of spectral condensation. The spectral…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
Disordered solids, straddling the solid-fluid boundary, lack a comprehensive continuum mechanical description. They exhibit a complex microstructure wherein multiple meta-stable states exist. Deforming disordered solids induces particles…
When submitted to large stresses at high temperature, usual crystals may irreversibly deform. This phenomenon is known as plasticity and it is due to the motion of crystal defects such as dislocations. We have discovered that, in the…
One of the most distinctive hallmarks of many-body systems far from equilibrium is the spontaneous emergence of order under conditions where disorder would be plausibly expected. Here, we report on the self-transition between ordered and…
We show from experiments and simulations on vibration-activated granular matter that self-propelled polar rods in an elastic medium on a substrate turn and move towards each other. We account for this effective attraction through a…
We use molecular dynamics simulations of a simple model to show that dispersions of slightly elongated colloidal particles with long-range dipolar interactions, like ferrofluids, can form a physical (reversible) gel at low volume fractions.…
A discrete model describing defects in crystal lattices and having the standard linear anisotropic elasticity as its continuum limit is proposed. The main ingredients entering the model are the elastic stiffness constants of the material…
We study an inertial chiral active fluid, formed by repulsive particles that transfer angular momentum through odd interactions, i.e. transverse forces. Chirality induces an inhomogeneous phase, consisting of rotating bubbles, whose…
Disclinations, first observed in mesomorphic phases, are relevant to a number of ill-ordered condensed matter media, with continuous symmetries or frustrated order. They also appear in polycrystals at the edges of grain boundaries. They are…
We demonstrate a novel method of introducing point defects (mono and di-vacancies) in a confined mono-layer colloidal crystal by manipulating individual particles with optical tweezers. Digital video microscopy is used to study defect…
Exploring structural order in disordered systems including liquids and glasses is an intriguing but challenging issue in condensed matter physics. Here we construct a new parameter based on the angular distribution function of particles and…
We study a two-dimensional crystal composed of active units governed by self-alignment. This mechanism induces a torque that aligns a particle's orientation with its velocity and leads to a phase transition from a disordered to a flocking…
The self-organised motion of vast numbers of creatures in a single direction is a spectacular example of emergent order. We recreate this phenomenon using actuated non-living components. We report here that millimetre-sized tapered rods,…
We consider the ordered and disordered dynamics for monolayers of rolling self-interacting particles with an offset center of mass and a non-isotropic inertia tensor. The rolling constraint is considered as a simplified model of a very…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
Chirality, or the breaking of mirror symmetry, appears across all scales in nature, from molecular conformations to the dynamics of bacterial collectives. Environments composed of such symmetry-breaking constituents can give rise to…
Granular material in a swirled container exhibits a curious transition as the number of particles is increased: at low densities the particle cluster rotates in the same direction as the swirling motion of the container, while at high…