Related papers: Data-driven discovery of active nematic hydrodynam…
Active nematics are dense systems of rodlike particles that consume energy to drive motion at the level of the individual particles. They exist in natural systems like biological tissues and artificial materials such as suspensions of…
A continuum description is essential for understanding a variety of collective phenomena in active matter. However, building quantitative continuum models of active matter from first principles can be extremely challenging due to both the…
Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…
The growing interest in active nematics and the emerging evidence of the relevance of topological defects in biology asks for reliable data analysis tools to identify, classify and track such defects in simulation and microscopy data. We…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
Defect dynamics in a thin active nematic layer is studied by asymptotic matching of solutions in the defect core and the far field. The analysis is facilitated by the correspondence between the 2D nematic and complex scalar field models.…
Active nematics are microscopically driven liquid crystals that exhibit dynamical steady states characterized by the creation and annihilation of topological defects. Motivated by experimental realizations of such systems made of biopolymer…
We develop an approximate, analytical model for the velocity of defects in active nematics by combining recent results for the velocity of topological defects in nematic liquid crystals with the flow field generated from individual defects…
Hydrodynamic theories effectively describe many-body systems out of equilibrium in terms of a few macroscopic parameters. However, such hydrodynamic parameters are difficult to derive from microscopics. Seldom is this challenge more…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
Using agent-based simulations of self-propelled particles subject to short-range repulsion and nematic alignment we explore the dynamical phases of a dense active material confined to the surface of a sphere. We map the dynamical phase…
Specific features of two-dimensional nematodynamics give rise to shortfalls of the tensor representation of the nematic order parameter commonly used in computations, especially in theory of active matter. The alternative representation in…
Topological defects play a prominent role in the physics of two-dimensional materials. When driven out of equilibrium in active nematics, disclinations can acquire spontaneous self-propulsion and drive self-sustained flows upon…
We propose an agent-based model of active flexible rods. Inspired by cytoskeletal flows, we introduce activity by an internal flow that contributes to the dissipative forces. The active force between our agents is central and reciprocal,…
In this work we present the first systematic framework to sculpt active nematics systems, using optimal control theory and a hydrodynamic model of active nematics. We demonstrate the use of two different control fields, (1) applied…
The structure and dynamics of important biological quasi-two-dimensional systems, ranging from cytoskeletal gels to tissues, are controlled by nematic order, flow, defects and activity. Continuum hydrodynamic descriptions combined with…
Recent experiments on active materials, such as dense bacterial suspensions and microtubule-kinesin motor mixtures, show a promising potential for achieving self-sustained flows. However, to develop active microfluidics it is necessary to…