Related papers: Controlling cell motion and microscale flow with p…
Active particle systems are a class of non-equilibrium systems composed of self-propelled Brownian particles; through interactions between particles within the system, a variety of intriguing collective behaviors can emerge. Based on…
Inelastic interaction of free-electrons with optical near fields has recently attracted attention for manipulating and shaping free-electron wavepackets. Understanding the nature and the dependence of the inelastic cross section on the…
We present a generic framework for describing interacting, spinning, active polar particles, aimed at modelling dense cell aggregates, where cells are treated as polar, rotating objects that interact mechanically with one another and their…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
In the absence of environmental cues, a migrating cell performs an isotropic random motion. Recently, the breaking of this isotropy has been observed when cells move in the presence of asymmetric adhesive patterns. However, up to now the…
Recent experiments suggest that the interplay between cells and the mechanics of their substrate gives rise to a diversity of morphological and migrational behaviors. Here, we develop a Cellular Potts Model of polarizing cells on a…
Although the motility of the flagellated bacteria, Escherichia coli, has been widely studied, the effect of viscosity on swimming speed remains controversial. The swimming mode of wild-type E.coli is often idealized as a "run-and- tumble"…
Hydrodynamically interacting active particles in an external harmonic potential form a self-assembled fluid pump at large enough P\'eclet numbers. Here, we give a quantitative criterion for the formation of the pump and show that particle…
We consider optical properties of a gas of molecules that are brought to fast unidirectional spinning by a pulsed laser field. It is shown that a circularly polarized probe light passing through the medium inverts its polarization…
Electrostatics in the solution phase is governed by free electrical charges such as ions, as well as by bound charges that arise when a polarizable medium responds to an applied field. In a local medium, described by a constant dielectric…
The clarification of the motion alignment mechanism in collective cell migration is an important issue commonly in physics and biology. In analogy with the self-propelled disk, the polarity memory effect of eukaryotic cell is a fundamental…
Cell movement, for example during embryogenesis or tumor metastasis, is a complex dynamical process resulting from an intricate interplay of multiple components of the cellular migration machinery. At first sight, the paths of migrating…
The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…
Several laser techniques have been suggested and demonstrated recently for preparing polarizable molecules in rapidly spinning states with a disc-like angular distribution. We consider motion of these spinning discs in inhomogeneous fields,…
During cell migration, cells become polarized, change their shape, and move in response to various internal and external cues. Cell polarization is defined through the spatio-temporal organization of molecules such as PI3K or small GTPases,…
Controlling the polarization state of electromagnetic radiation enables the investigation of fundamental symmetry properties of matter through chiroptical processes. Many strategies have been developed to reveal structural or dynamical…
Eukaryotic cells can polarize and migrate in response to electric fields via "galvanotaxis," which aids wound healing. Experimental evidence suggests cells sense electric fields via molecules on the cell's surface redistributing via…
We investigate the coupling of the spin angular momentum of light beams with elliptical polarization to the spin degree of freedom of free electrons. It is shown that this coupling, which is of similar origin as the well-known spin-orbit…
Ordered, collective motions commonly arise spontaneously in systems of many interacting, active units, ranging from cellular tissues and bacterial colonies to self-propelled colloids and animal flocks. Active phases are especially rich when…
Optical absorption of circularly polarized light is well known to yield an electron spin polarization in direct band gap semiconductors. We demonstrate that electron spins can even be generated with high efficiency by absorption of linearly…