Related papers: Feedback Microrheology in Soft Matter
We study the dynamics of rigid spheres embedded in viscoelastic media and address two questions of importance to microrheology. First we calculate the complete response to an external force of a single bead in a homogeneous elastic network…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
We present an efficient computational methodology to obtain the viscoelastic response of dilute solutions of semiflexible filaments. By considering an approach based on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, we were able to evaluate the…
In this review we summarize theoretical progress in the field of active matter, placing it in the context of recent experiments. Our approach offers a unified framework for the mechanical and statistical properties of living matter:…
Complex fluids subjected to localized microscopic energy inputs, typical of active microrheology setups, exhibit poorly understood nonequilibrium behaviors because of the intricate self-organization of their mesoscopic constituents. In this…
We study the microrheology of active suspensions through direct hydrodynamic simulations using model pusher-like microswimmers. We demonstrate that the friction coefficient of a probe particle is notably reduced by hydrodynamic interactions…
The constituents of soft matter systems such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, polymers, and biological tissues undergo microscopic random motion, due to thermal energy. They may also experience drift motion correlated over mesoscopic or…
Thermal motion gives rise to fluctuations in free surfaces; the propagation of the thermally excited waves on such surfaces depends on the mechanical properties of the medium. Their measurement can therefore provide information on those…
This work is devoted to the study of displacement fluctuations of micron-sized particles in an aging colloidal glass. We address the issue of the validity of the fluctuation dissipation theorem (FDT) and the time evolution of viscoelastic…
Very recently, the construction of twist actuators from magnetorheological gels and elastomers has been suggested. These materials consist of magnetizable colloidal particles embedded in a soft elastic polymeric environment. The twist…
We consider a driven tracer particle (TP) in a bath of hard-core particles undergoing continuous exchanges with a reservoir. We develop an analytical framework which allows us to go beyond the standard force-velocity relation used for this…
Understanding the microscopic origin of the rheological behavior of soft matter is a long-lasting endeavour. While early efforts concentrated mainly on the relationship between rheology and structure, current research focuses on the role of…
We describe a high-resolution, high-bandwidth technique for determining the local viscoelasticity of soft materials such as polymer gels. Loss and storage shear moduli are determined from the power spectra of thermal fluctuations of…
Time-lapse microscopy imaging provides direct access to the dynamics of soft and living systems. At mesoscopic scales, such microscopy experiments reveal intrinsic fluctuations, which may have both thermal and non-equilibrium origins. These…
Thermal fluctuations of microtubules (MTs) and other cytoskeletal filaments govern to a great extent the complex rheological properties of the cytoskeleton in eukaryotic cells. In recent years, much effort has been put into capturing the…
Spin fluctuations have a substantial influence on the electron and lattice behaviors in magnetic materials, which, however, is difficult to be tracked properly by prevalent first-principles methods. We propose a versatile self-adaptive…
The jamming transition is a nonequilibrium critical phenomenon, which governs characteristic mechanical properties of jammed soft materials, such as pastes, emulsions, and granular matters. Both experiments and theory of jammed soft…
We experimentally study the transient motion of a colloidal particle actively dragged by an optical trap through different viscoelastic fluids (wormlike micelles, polymer solutions, and entangled $\lambda$-phage DNA). We observe that, after…
The transport of individual entities through interconnected structures is a process of practical relevance both in biology and technology. Examples are given by diffusive dynamics of molecules in porous structures. In soft environments,…
Soft elastic composite materials containing particulate rigid inclusions in a soft elastic matrix are candidates for developing soft actuators or tunable damping devices. The possibility to reversibly drive the rigid inclusions within such…