Related papers: Tuneable defect-curvature coupling and topological…

Active colloids and liquid crystals are capable of locally converting the macroscopically-supplied energy into directional motion and promise a host of new applications, ranging from drug delivery to cargo transport at the mesoscale. Here…

We propose a reaction-diffusion system that converts topological information of an active nematic into chemical signals. We show that a curvature-activated reaction dipole is sufficient for creating a system that dynamically senses topology…

Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…

We study the phase behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal shells with different geometries. We compare the cases of tangential and no anchoring at the surface, focussing on the former case, which leads to a competition between the…

Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…

Freestanding tubular crystals offer a general description of crystalline order on deformable surfaces with cylindrical topology, such as single-walled carbon nanotubes, microtubules, and recently reported colloidal assemblies. These systems…

Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…

We numerically study the coarsening of topological defects in 2D polar active matter and make several interesting observations and predictions. (i) The long time state is characterized by nonzero density of defects, in stark contrast to…

Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…

Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…

Collectively moving cellular systems often contain a proportion of dead cells or non-motile genotypes. When mixed, nematically aligning motile and non-motile agents are known to segregate spontaneously. However, the role that topological…

In the last years self-motile droplets attracted the attention of scientists from different fields ranging from applied biology to theoretical physics, because of their promising technological applications and important biological…

Topological defects determine the collective properties of anisotropic materials. How their configurations are controlled is not well understood however, especially in 3D. In living matter moreover, 2D defects have been linked to biological…

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…

Topological defects, which are singular points in a director field, play a major role in shaping active systems. Here, we experimentally study topological defects and the flow patterns around them, that are formed during the highly rapid…

Active systems, from bacterial suspensions to cellular monolayers, are continuously driven out of equilibrium by local injection of energy from their constituent elements and exhibit turbulent-like and chaotic patterns. Here we demonstrate…

Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…

Defects arise when nematic liquid crystals are under topological constraints at the boundary. Recently the study of defects has drawn a lot of attention. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between two-dimensional defects and…

Monolayers of anisotropic cells exhibit long-ranged orientational order and topological defects. During the development of organisms, orientational order often influences morphogenetic events. However, the linkage between the mechanics of…

Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…