Related papers: Thermal Schwinger Effect: Defect Production in Com…
Bundles of stiff filaments are ubiquitous in the living world, found both in the cytoskeleton and in the extracellular medium. These bundles are typically held together by smaller cross-linking molecules. We demonstrate analytically,…
The Euler buckling of rods is a long-studied mechanical instability, and it remains relevant to this day, as the constituent components in many biological and physical systems are linear polymers, such as microtubules or carbon nanotubes.…
We examine the nonequilibrium production of topological defects -- braids -- in semiflexible filament bundles under cycles of compression and tension. During these cycles, the period of compression facilitates the thermally activated pair…
Twisted assemblies of filaments in ropes, cables and bundles are essential structural elements in wide use in macroscopic materials as well as within the cells and tissues of living organisms. We develop the unique, non-linear elastic…
The ability of biomolecules to exert forces on their surroundings or resist compression from the environment is essential in a variety of biologically relevant contexts. As has been understood for centuries, slender rods can only be…
Inspired by the complex influence of the globular crosslinking proteins on the formation of biofilament bundles in living organisms, we study and analyze a theoretical model for the structure and thermodynamics of bundles of helical…
The formation of bundles composed of actin filaments and cross-linking proteins is an essential process in the maintenance of the cells' cytoskeleton. It has also been recreated by in-vitro experiments, where actin networks are routinely…
We develop the theory of the coupling between in-plane order and out-of-plane geometry in twisted, two-dimensionally ordered filament bundles based on the non-linear continuum elasticity theory of columnar materials. We show that twisted…
In this article we address the problem of Euler's buckling instability in a charged semi-flexible polymer that is under the action of a compressive force. We consider this instability as a phase transition and investigate the role of…
We consider a biopolymer bundle consisting of filaments that are crosslinked together. The crosslinks are reversible: they can dynamically bind and unbind adjacent filament pairs as controlled by a binding enthalpy. The bundle is subjected…
The buckling of thin elastic sheets is a classic mechanical instability that occurs over a wide range of scales. In the extreme limit of atomically thin membranes like graphene, thermal fluctuations can dramatically modify such mechanical…
We introduce a phenomenological model to study the properties of bundles of polar filaments which interact via active elements. The stability of the homogeneous state, the attractors of the dynamics in the unstable regime and the tensile…
We present a systematic statistical mechanical analysis of the conformational properties of a stiff polyelectrolyte chain with intrachain attractions that are due to counterion correlations. We show that the mean-field solution corresponds…
We analyze entanglement generated by the Schwinger effect using a mode-by-mode formalism for scalar and spinor QED in constant backgrounds. Starting from thermal initial states, we derive compact, closed-form results for bipartite…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
Topological defects are crucial to the thermodynamics and structure of condensed matter systems. For instance, when incorporated into crystalline membranes like graphene, disclinations with positive and negative topological charge…
Cohesive assemblies of filaments are a common structural motif found in diverse contexts, ranging from biological materials such as fibrous proteins, to artificial materials such as carbon nanotube ropes and micropatterned filament arrays.…
We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…
Buckling plays a critical role in the transport and dynamics of elastic microfilaments in Stokesian fluids. However, previous work has only considered filaments with homogeneous structural properties. Filament backbone stiffness can be…
Combining simulations and theory I study the interplay between bundle elastic degrees of freedom and crosslink binding propensity. By slowly driving bundles into a deformed configuration, and depending on the mechanical stiffness of the…