Related papers: Polar Fluctuations Lead to Extensile Nematic Behav…
Using numerical simulations, we characterized the behavior of an elastic membrane immersed in an active fluid. Our findings reveal a nontrivial folding and re-expansion of the membrane that is controlled by the interplay of its resistance…
Thermal fluctuations strongly modify the large length-scale elastic behavior of crosslinked membranes, giving rise to scale-dependent elastic moduli. While thermal effects in flat membranes are well understood, many natural and artificial…
We propose a model for the dynamics of a probe embedded in a living cell, where both thermal fluctuations and nonequilibrium activity coexist. The model is based on a confining harmonic potential describing the elastic cytoskeletal matrix,…
Biological membranes undergo noticeable thermal fluctuations at physiological temperatures. When two membranes approach each other, they hinder the out of plane fluctuations of the other. This hindrance leads to an entropic repulsive force…
Inspired by recent experiments that highlight the role of nematic defects in the morphogenesis of epithelial tissues, we develop a minimal framework to study the dynamics of an active curved surface driven by its nematic texture. Allowing…
Correlations in fluids in nonequilibrium steady states are long ranged. Hence, finite-size effects have important consequences in the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of fluids. One consequence is that nonequilibrium temperature fluctuations…
Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…
We analyze the fluctuations in particle positions and inter-particle forces in disordered jammed crystals in the limit of weak disorder. We demonstrate that such athermal systems are fundamentally different from their thermal counterparts,…
We construct the equations of motion for the coupled dynamics of order parameter and concentration for the nematic phase of driven particles on a solid surface, and show that they imply (i) giant number fluctuations, with a standard…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
We study the vertex model for epithelial tissue mechanics extended to include coupling between the cell shapes and tensions in cell-cell junctions. This coupling represents an active force which drives the system out of equilibrium and…
We present a Monte Carlo study of external surface anchoring in nematic cells with partially disordered solid substrates, as well as of intrinsic anchoring at free nematic interfaces. The simulations are based on the simple hexagonal…
We study the flat phase of nematic elastomer membranes with rotational symmetry spontaneously broken by in-plane nematic order. Such state is characterized by a vanishing elastic modulus for simple shear and soft transverse phonons. At…
Meso-scale turbulence was originally observed experimentally in various suspensions of swimming bacteria, as well as in the collective motion of active colloids. The corresponding large-scale dynamical patterns were reproduced in a simple…
We derive a new fluctuation-dissipation relation for non-equilibrium systems with long-term memory. We show how this relation allows one to access new experimental information regarding active forces in living cells that cannot otherwise be…
Active semiflexible filament collectives, ranging from motor-driven cytoskeletal filaments to slender organisms such as cyanobacteria and worm aggregates, abound in nature. Yet how activity and flexibility jointly govern their organization,…
The rheological behaviour of an emulsion made of an active polar component and an isotropic passive fluid is studied by lattice Boltzmann methods. Different flow regimes are found by varying the values of shear rate and extensile activity…
Cells modify their volume in response to changes in osmotic pressure but it is usually assumed that other active shape variations do not involve significant volume fluctuations. Here we report experiments demonstrating that water transport…
Thermal fluctuations in non-equilibrium steady states generically lead to power law decay of correlations for conserved quantities. Embedded bodies which constrain fluctuations in turn experience fluctuation induced forces. We compute these…
Biologically driven non-equilibrium fluctuations are often characterized by their non-Gaussianity or by an "effective temperature", which is frequency dependent and higher than the ambient temperature. We address these two measures…