Related papers: Light-induced swirling and locomotion
Molecular crystals respond to a light stimulus by bending, twisting, rolling, jumping, or other kinematic behaviors. These behaviors are known to be affected by, among others, the intensity of the incident light, the aspect ratios of…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
Photonic crystals have great potential for use as laser-driven accelerator structures. A photonic crystal is a dielectric structure arranged in a periodic geometry. Like a crystalline solid with its electronic band structure, the modes of a…
We compute how elastic deformations of optical fibers affect light propagation therein. Specifically, we consider differences in wave-guiding properties of straight fibers subject to different external temperatures, pressures, and…
Liquid-crystal networks consist of weakly crosslinked polymers that are coupled to liquid-crystal molecules. The resultant hybrid system has rich elastic properties. We develop a phase field model to describe mechanical properties of a…
Viscoelasticity governs the locomotion strategies of deformable microorganisms, rendering it a fundamental mechanical property of microbial motility and an integral component in the design of envisioned microbots. Recent studies have shown…
Excursions far from their equilibrium structures can bring crystalline solids through collective transformations including transitions into new phases that may be transient or long-lived. Direct spectroscopic observation of…
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…
The design of artificial microswimmers is often inspired by the strategies of natural microorganisms. Many of these creatures exploit the fact that elasticity breaks the time-reversal symmetry of motion at low Reynolds numbers, but this…
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…
Collective motion of self-propelled organisms or synthetic particles often termed active fluid has attracted enormous attention in broad scientific community because of it fundamentally non-equilibrium nature. Energy input and interactions…
The ability to manipulate polar entities with multiple external fields opens exciting possibilities for emerging functionalities and novel applications in spin systems, photonics, metamaterials, and soft matter. Liquid crystals (LCs),…
Twisted light carries a non-zero orbital angular momentum, that can be transferred from light to electrons and particles ranging from nanometers to micrometers. Up to now, the interplay between twisted light with dipolar systems has…
Light propagation through artificially patterned anisotropic materials, such as dielectric metasurfaces, enables precise control of the spatio-vectorial properties of optical fields using highly transparent, thin, and flat optical elements.…
This work presents the first optical trapping experimental demonstration of micro-particles with Frozen Waves. Frozen Waves are an efficient method to model longitudinally the intensity of non-diffracting beams obtained by superposing…
We numerically show that molecules adsorbed in a soft porous crystal form a superlattice (SL) stabilized by elastic interactions. In a mechanically flexible honeycomb lattice model, when the elastic interactions between the next nearest…
The conformations of semiflexible (bio)polymers are studied in flow through geometrically structured microchannels. Using mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, we show that the polymer undergoes a rod-to-helix transition as it moves from the…
In this article, we construct and analyze models of anisotropic crosslinked polymers employing tools from the theory of liquid crystal elastomers. The anisotropy of these systems stems from the presence of rigid-rod molecular units in the…
Nonlinear elastic metamaterials are known to support a variety of dynamic phenomena that enhance our capacity to manipulate elastic waves. Since these properties stem from complex, subwavelength geometry, full-scale dynamic simulations are…
We consider a continuum model of active viscoelastic matter, whereby an active nematic liquid-crystal is coupled to a minimal model of polymer dynamics with a viscoelastic relaxation time $\tau_C$. To explore the resulting interplay between…