Related papers: Design rules for controlling active topological de…
Topological defects are at the root of the large-scale organization of liquid crystals. In two-dimensional active nematics, two classes of topological defects of charges $\pm 1/2$ are known to play a major role due to active stresses.…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
The self-propulsion of +1/2 topological defects is a hallmark of active nematic fluids, where the defects are advected by the flow field they themselves generate. In this paper we propose a minimal model for defect self-propulsion in a…
Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…
Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…
A salient feature of topological phases are surface states and many of the widely studied physical properties are directly tied to their existence. Although less explored, a variety of topological phases can however similarly be…
Polar active matter of self-propelled particles sustain spontaneous flows through the full-integer topological defects. We study theoretically the effect of both polar and dipolar active forces on the flow profile around $\pm 1$ defects and…
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…
Topological defects play a central role in the formation and organization of various biological systems. Historically, such nonequilibrium defects have been mainly studied in the context of homogeneous active nematics. Phase-separated…
Defects, and in particular topological defects, are architectural motifs that play a crucial role in natural materials. Here we provide a systematic strategy to introduce such defects in mechanical metamaterials. We first present…
Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…
How do topological defects affect the degree of order in active matter? To answer this question we investigate an agent-based model of self-propelled particles, which accounts for polar alignment and short-ranged repulsive interactions. For…
Active matter is characterized by its ability to induce motion by self-generated stress. In the case of a solid, such motion can lead to shape transformations. The stress-generating components can be anisotropic endowing the material with…
We describe the flows and morphological dynamics of topological defect lines and loops in three-dimensional active nematics and show, using theory and numerical modelling, that they are governed by the local profile of the orientational…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
To enhance the understanding of the behavior of active nematic, it is important to understand the behavior of topological defects. In this paper, we study the configuration of topological defects of a two-dimensional active nematic around a…
In many active systems, swimmers collectively stir the surrounding fluid to stabilize some self-sustained vortices. The resulting nonequilibrium state is often referred to as active turbulence, by analogy with the turbulence of passive…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Collective cell migration governs a range of physiological and pathological processes, from tissue morphogenesis to cancer invasion, in which topological defects arise as an inevitable consequence of frequent cellular rearrangement and…
Topological defects play a key role in two-dimensional active nematics, and a transient role in two-dimensional active polar fluids. In this paper, we study both the transient and long-time behavior of defects in two-dimensional active…