Related papers: Design rules for controlling active topological de…
Topological insulators are materials where current does not flow through the bulk, but along the boundaries, only. They are of particular practical importance, since it is considerably more difficult, by ``conventional'' means, to affect…
Active solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…
Phase separation in passive systems leads to uncontrolled droplet growth, limiting structural control in soft materials and cells. We identify a generic mechanism to arrest coarsening based on chemical interconversion between molecular…
Active colloids, also known as artificial microswimmers, are self-propelled micro and nanoparticles that convert uniform sources of fuel (e.g. chemical) or uniform external driving fields (e.g. magnetic or electric) into directed motion by…
Twisted assemblies of filaments in ropes, cables and bundles are essential structural elements in wide use in macroscopic materials as well as within the cells and tissues of living organisms. We develop the unique, non-linear elastic…
Boundary conditions dictate how fluids, including liquid crystals, flow when pumped through a channel. Can boundary conditions also be used to control internally driven active fluids that generate flows spontaneously? By using numerical…
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…
Active matter drives its constituent agents to move autonomously by harnessing free energy, leading to diverse emergent states with relevance to both biological processes and inanimate functionalities. Achieving maximum reconfigurability of…
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.…
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…
Many systems in nature and the synthetic world involve ordered arrangements of units on two-dimensional surfaces. We review here the fundamental role payed by both the topology of the underlying surface and its detailed curvature. Topology…
This article summarizes some of the open questions in the field of active matter that have emerged during Active20, a nine-week program held at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in Spring 2020. The article does not provide…
Many fascinating properties of biological active matter crucially depend on the capacity of constituting entities to perform directed motion, e.g., molecular motors transporting vesicles inside cells or bacteria searching for food. While…
We investigate the influence of curvature and topology on crystalline wrinkling patterns in generic elastic bilayers. Our numerical analysis predicts that the total number of defects created by adiabatic compression exhibits universal…
We use coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study the motility of a 2D vesicle containing self-propelled rods, as a function of the vesicle bending rigidity and the number density, length, and activity of the enclosed rods.…
Systems containing active components are intrinsically out of equilibrium, while binary mixtures reach their equilibrium configuration when complete phase separation is achieved. Active particles are found to stabilise non-equilibrium…
Tangentially driven active polymers (TDAPs), model systems for motor-driven filaments, have been extensively studied in uniform activity fields. Here, we show that an activity gradient breaks fore-aft symmetry, generating net body forces…
For non-topological quantum materials, introducing defects can significantly alter their properties by modifying symmetry and generating a nonzero analytical index, thus transforming the material into a topological one. We present a method…
Active polymers are driven out of equilibrium by internal forces and exhibit conformational properties that differ fundamentally from those of passive chains. Here we study how spatially modulated tangential activity reshapes the…
Living materials at different length scales manifest active nematic features such as orientational order, nematic topological defects, and active nematic turbulence. Using numerical simulations we investigate the impact of fluid inertia on…