Related papers: Autonomous waves and global motion modes in living…
Densely packed, motile bacteria can adopt collective states not seen in conventional, passive materials. These states remain in many ways mysterious, and their physical characterization can aid our understanding of natural bacterial…
One characteristic feature of soft matter systems is their strong response to external stimuli. As a consequence they are comparatively easily driven out of their ground state and out of equilibrium, which leads to many of their fascinating…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically 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…
Complex interactions between cellular systems and their surrounding extracellular matrices are emerging as important mechanical regulators of cell functions such as proliferation, motility, and cell death, and such cellular systems are…
We examine the stability of the "coast" motion of fish, that is to say, the motion of a neutrally buoyant fish at constant speed in a straight line. The forces and moments acting on the fish body are thus perfectly balanced. The fish motion…
We explore phase separation and kinetic arrest in a model active colloidal system consisting of self-propelled, hard-core particles with nonconvex shapes. The passive limit of the model, namely cross-shaped particles on a square lattice,…
It is the aim of the paper to present a new point of view on rotational elasticity in a nonlinear setting using orthogonal matrices. The proposed model, in the linear approximation, can be compared to the well known equilibrium equations of…
Fiberboids are active filaments trapped at the interface of two phases, able of harnessing energy (and matter) fluxes across the interface in order to produce a rolling-like self-propulsion. We discuss several table-top examples and develop…
Swimming microorganisms often self propel in fluids with complex rheology. While past theoretical work indicates that fluid viscoelasticity should hinder their locomotion, recent experiments on waving swimmers suggest a possible…
Self-accelerating waves in conservative systems, which usually feature slowly decaying tails, such as Airy waves, have drawn great interest in studies of quantum and classical wave dynamics. They typically appear in linear media, while…
Locomotion is essential for living cells. It enables bacteria and algae to explore space for food, cancer to spread, and immune system to fight infections. Motile cells display trajectories of intriguing complexity, from regular (e.g.…
Topological phenomena typically govern the behavior of delocalized waves, giving rise to robust transport in electronic, photonic, and mechanical systems. Whether similar principles can directly control the motion of a localized particle,…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
Several experiments have demonstrated the existence of an electro-mechanical effect in many biological tissues and hydrogels, and its actual influence on growth, migration, and pattern formation. Here, to model these interactions and…
We formulate the thin-film hydrodynamics of a suspension of polar self-driven particles and show that it is prone to several instabilities through the interplay of activity, polarity and the existence of a free surface. Our approach…
Propagating spiral waves have been discovered in various chemical, biological and physical systems. Spiral waves in multicellular organisms are often associated with essential living functions. Although certain eukaryotic microorganisms…
Amorphous solids are mechanically rigid while possessing a disordered structure similar to that of dense liquids. Recent research indicates that dynamical heterogeneity, spatio-temporal fluctuations in local dynamical behavior, might help…
Soft surfaces, spanning vastly different environmental and biomedical settings, are frequently colonised by surface-associated bacteria. Yet, how soft surfaces govern bacterial dynamics and their self-organisation into colonies remains…
Here we show that coupling to curvature has profound effects on collective motion in active systems, leading to patterns not observed in flat space. Biological examples of such active motion in curved environments are numerous: curvature…