Related papers: Geometrical control of interface patterning underl…
Microorganisms, such as bacteria and microalgae, often live in habitats consisting of a liquid phase and a plethora of interfaces. The precise ways in which these motile microbes behave in their confined environment remain unclear. Using…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Particles diffusing near interfaces face anisotropic resistance to motion due to hydrodynamic interactions. While this has been extensively studied near \textit{hard} interfaces since the works of Lorentz and Brenner, our understanding of…
Active stresses in biological cells and tissues drive many developmental processes. However, increasing experimental evidence suggests that additional mechanical interactions with surrounding material can play a crucial role in guiding…
Topology transcends boundaries that conventionally delineate physical, biological and engineering sciences. Our ability to mathematically describe topology, combined with our access to precision tracking and manipulation approaches, has…
In nature, microorganisms must often cope with hostile environmental conditions. To do so they have developed sophisticated cooperative behavior and intricate communication capabilities, such as: direct cell-cell physical interactions via…
Understanding the mechanical instabilities of two-dimensional membranes has strong connection to the subjects of structure instabilities, morphology control and materials failures. In this work, we investigate the plastic mechanism…
The presence of interfaces and grain boundaries significantly impacts the mechanical properties of materials, particularly when dealing with micro- or nano-scale samples. Distinct interactions between dislocations and grain boundaries can…
Biomolecular condensates organize biochemical processes by spatially concentrating molecules while allowing for dynamic exchange with their surroundings. However, transport across their interface can be strongly attenuated, leading to…
Self-organized dynamic patterns in dense active matter are striking manifestations of non-equilibrium physics. A prominent example is the macroscopic elliptical motion observed in quasi-2D bacterial suspensions, which has lacked a physical…
Interfaces in tissues are ubiquitous, both between tissue and environment as well as between populations of different cell types. The propagation of an interface can be driven mechanically. % e.g. by a difference in the respective…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
Pattern dynamics on curved surfaces are found everywhere in nature. The geometry of surfaces have been shown to influence dynamics and play a functional role, yet a comprehensive understanding is still elusive. Here, we report for the first…
Biomolecular condensates help organize the cell cytoplasm and nucleoplasm into spatial compartments with different chemical compositions. A key feature of such compositional patterning is the local enrichment of enzymatically active…
The persistent dynamics of active particles makes them explore extended portions of an obstacle's boundary during collisions. From impact to escape, the net applied forces depend on the curvature of the wall and increase in the presence of…
Surface-driven flows are ubiquitous in nature, from subcellular cytoplasmic streaming to organ-scale ciliary arrays. Here, we model how confined geometries can be used to engineer complex hydrodynamic patterns driven by activity prescribed…
Dense suspensions of swimming bacteria are known to exhibit collective behaviour arising from the interplay of steric and hydrodynamic interactions. Unconfined suspensions exhibit transient, recurring vortices and jets, whereas those…
In biological systems, active agents such as actomyosin and cells move and interact on curved surfaces, exhibiting diverse phenomena. These observations have motivated studies of how curvature shapes their collective behavior. Here, using a…
Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…
In many biological systems, the curvature of the surfaces cells live on influence their collective properties. Curvature should likewise influence the behavior of active colloidal particles. We show using molecular simulation of…