Related papers: Symbiotic Dynamics in Living Liquid Crystals
We study experimentally and numerically the motion of a self-phoretic active particle in two-dimensional (2D) loosely-packed colloidal crystals at fluid interfaces. Two scenarios emerge depending on the interaction between the active…
A theoretical analysis is presented of a nematic liquid crystal confined between substrates pat- terned with squares that promote vertical and planar alignment. Two approaches are used to eluci- date the behavior across a wide range of…
Active nematics are microscopically driven liquid crystals that exhibit dynamical steady states characterized by the creation and annihilation of topological defects. Motivated by experimental realizations of such systems made of biopolymer…
The emergence of macroscopic order and patterns is a central paradigm in systems of (self-)propelled agents, and a key component in the structuring of many biological systems.The relationships between the ordering process and the underlying…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…
Self-assembly is one of the crucial mechanisms allowing to design multifunctional materials. Soft hybrid materials contain components of different nature and exhibit competitive interactions which drive self-organisation into structures of…
The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…
Nematic liquid crystal (LC) is a partially ordered matter that has been a popular model system for studying a variety of topological behaviors in condensed matter. In this work, utilizing a spontaneously twisting achiral LC, we introduce a…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
It has been shown that an anisotropic liquid crystalline (LC) environment can be used to guide the self-propulsion dynamics of dispersed microswimmers, such as bacteria. This type of composite system is named "living nematic" (LN). In the…
We consider a two-dimensional athermal binary mixture of Lennard-Jones particles with persistent random active forces. The liquid phase of this system for active forces exceeding a threshold value exhibits self-organization with long-range…
Active matter systems may be characterised by the conversion of energy into active motion, e.g. the self-propulsion of microorganisms. Artificial active colloids form models which exhibit essential properties of more complex biological…
When a nematic liquid crystal is confined in a porous medium with strong anchoring conditions, topological defects, called disclinations, are stably formed with numerous possible configurations. Since the energy barriers between them are…
The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…
Motile living organisms routinely probe their surroundings to adapt in ever-evolving environments. Although synthetic microswimmers offer surrogates for self-propelled living entities, they often lack the complex feedback mechanisms that…
We use a continuum, two-fluid approach to study a mixture of two active nematic fluids. Even in the absence of thermodynamically-driven ordering, for mixtures of different activities we observe turbulent microphase separation, where domains…
We consider a microscopic field theoretical approach for interacting active nematic particles. With only steric interactions the self-propulsion strength in such systems can lead to different collective behaviour, e.g., synchronized…
Nematic liquid-crystal devices are a powerful tool to structure light in different degrees of freedom, both in classical and quantum regimes. Most of these devices exploit either the possibility of introducing a position-dependent phase…
Active glassy matter has recently emerged as a novel class of non-equilibrium soft matter, combining energy-driven, active particle movement with dense and disordered glass-like behavior. Here we review the state-of-the-art in this field…