Related papers: Topological Floppy Modes in Epithelial Tissues
In this Letter, an elastic twisted kagome lattice at a critical twist angle, called self-dual kagome lattice, is shown to exhibit peculiar finite-frequency topological modes which emerge when certain conditions are satisfied. These states…
Mechanical metamaterials are artificial structures with unusual properties, such as negative Poisson ratio, bistability or tunable vibrational properties, that originate in the geometry of their unit cell. At the heart of such unusual…
The vertex model is a popular framework for modelling tightly packed biological cells, such as confluent epithelia. Cells are described by convex polygons tiling the plane and their equilibrium is found by minimizing a global mechanical…
States of self-stress, tensions and compressions of structural elements that result in zero net forces, play an important role in determining the load-bearing ability of structures ranging from bridges to metamaterials with tunable…
We consider a one-dimensional, time-reversal-invariant system with attractive interactions and spin-orbit coupling. Such a system is gapless due to the strong quantum fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter. However, we show…
We derive a continuum mechanical model to capture the morphological changes occurring at the pretumoral stage of epithelial tissues. The proposed model aims to investigate the competition between the bulk elasticity of the epithelium and…
The vertex model is widely used to describe the dynamics of epithelial tissues, because of its simplicity and versatility and the direct inclusion of biophysical parameters. Here, it is shown that quite generally, when cells modify their…
Many morphogenetic processes involve mechanical rearrangement of epithelial tissues that is driven by precisely regulated cytoskeletal forces and cell adhesion. The mechanical state of the cell and intercellular adhesion are not only the…
Topological defects (including disclinations and dislocations) which commonly exist in various materials have shown an amazing ability to produce excellent mechanical and physical properties of matters. In this paper, disclinations and…
We present a class of mechanical lattices based on elliptical gears with quasiperiodic modulation and geometric nonlinearity, capable of exhibiting topologically protected modes and amplitude-driven transitions. Starting from a…
Soft elastic filaments that can be stretched, bent and twisted exhibit a range of topologically and geometrically complex morphologies that include plectonemes, solenoids, knot-like and braid-like structures. We combine numerical…
Topological photonics sheds light on some of the surprising phenomena seen in condensed matter physics that arise with the appearance of topological invariants. Optical waveguides provide a well-controlled platform to investigate effects…
We introduce an Active Vertex Model (AVM) for cell-resolution studies of the mechanics of confluent epithelial tissues consisting of tens of thousands of cells, with a level of detail inaccessible to similar methods. The AVM combines the…
Using a mean field approach and simulation, we study the non-linear mechanical response of the vertex model (VM) of biological tissue under compression and dilation. The VM is known to exhibit a transition between rigid and fluid-like, or…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
How do topological defects affect the degree of order in active matter? To answer this question we investigate an agent-based model of self-propelled particles, which accounts for polar alignment and short-ranged repulsive interactions. For…
We investigate topological edge states in one-dimensional off-diagonal mosaic lattices, where nearest-neighbor hopping amplitudes are modulated periodically with period $\kappa>1$. Analytically, we demonstrate that discrete edge states…
Topological phononic crystals, alike their electronic counterparts, are characterized by a bulk-edge correspondence where the interior of a material dictates the existence of stable surface or boundary modes. In the mechanical setup, such…
Constructing systems that exhibit time-scales much longer than those of the underlying components, as well as emergent dynamical and collective behavior, is a key goal in fields such as synthetic biology and materials self-assembly.…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…