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We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
We report molecular dynamics simulations of a system of repulsive, polymer-tethered colloidal particles. We use an explicit polymer model to explore how the length and the behavior of the polymer (ideal or self-avoiding) affect the ability…
We investigate condensation of a long confined chiral nematic polymer inside a spherical enclosure, mimicking condensation of DNA inside a viral capsid. The Landau-de Gennes nematic free energy {\sl Ansatz} appropriate for nematic polymers…
Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…
Nanometer-thick supported lms of polymer melts spontaneously form and spread around sessile droplets that are deposited on oxidized silicon wafers. At steady state, the lms become dense and adopt a uniform thickness which is equal to twice…
A nematic membrane is a sheet with embedded orientational order, which can occur in biological cells, liquid crystal films, manufactured materials, and other soft matter systems. By formulating the free energy of nematic films using tensor…
We study a model of rolling particles subject to stochastic fluctuations, which may be relevant in systems of nano- or micro-scale particles where rolling is an approximation for strong static friction. We consider the simplest possible…
Using analytical calculations, we characterize the rotational behavior of a rigid spherical particle when subject to a net external torque in a continuous viscoelastic environment. On long time scales, the embedding medium can either…
Twisted coronal loops should be ubiquitous in the solar corona. Twisted magnetic fields contain excess magnetic energy, which can be released during magnetic reconnection, causing solar flares. The aim of this work is to investigate…
We analyse the elastic energy of an intercalated smectic where orientationally ordered polymers with an average orientation varying from layer to layer are intercalated between smectic planes. The lowest order terms in the coupling between…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit both crystal-like and fluid-like features. In particular, the propagation of an acoustic wave shows an unexpected occurrence of some of the solid-like features at the hydrodynamic level, namely, the…
We propose an extension of Frank-Oseen's elastic energy for bulk nematic liquid crystals which is based on the hypothesis that the fundamental deformations allowed in nematic liquid crystals are splay, twist and bend. The extended elastic…
We study the translocation of a semiflexible polymer through a conical channel with attractive surface interactions and a driving force which varies spatially inside the channel. Using the results of the translocation dynamics of a flexible…
An elastic membrane with embedded nematic molecules is considered as a model of anisotropic fluid membrane with internal ordering. By considering the geometric coupling between director field and membrane curvature, the nematic texture is…
Motivated by recently discovered unusual properties of bulk nematic elastomers, we study a phase diagram of liquid-crystalline polymerized phantom membranes, focusing on in-plane nematic order. We predict that such membranes should…
The role of active stress on the conformational dynamics of a polymer has drawn significant interest due to its potential applications in understanding the energy landscape of protein structures, buckling of biopolymers, genomic spatial…
We develop a lattice model for the splay flexoelectric effect in nematic liquid crystals. In this model, each lattice site has a spin representing the local molecular orientation, and the interaction between neighboring spins represents…
We investigate theoretically the collective dynamics of soft active particles living in a viscous fluid. We focus on a minimal model for active but non-motile particles consisting of $N>1$ elastic dimers deformed by active stresses and…
We perform experiments on thin-film diaphragms to show that the folding patterns of anisotropically compressed diaphragms are strikingly different from those of isotropically compressed ones. We then use a simple von Karman model to relate…