Related papers: Friction mediated phase transition in confined act…
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…
Cell monolayers are a central model system to tissue biophysics. In vivo, epithelial tissues are curved on the scale of microns, and curvature's role in the onset of spontaneous tissue flows is still not well-understood. Here, we present a…
Since a rigorous microscopic treatment of a nematic fluid system based on a pairwise interaction potential is immensely complex we had introduced a simple mean field potential which was a modification of the Maier-Saupe potential in a…
We investigate the statistical behavior of a system comprising fore-aft symmetric rods confined between two vertically vibrating plates using numerical simulations closely resembling the experimental setup studied by Narayan et al., Science…
Two-dimensional active nematics are often modeled using phenomenological continuum theories that describe the dynamics of the nematic director and fluid velocity through partial differential equations (PDEs). While these models provide a…
We discover a new type of nonequilibrium phase transition in a model of chromatin dynamics, which accounts for the coherent motions that have been observed in experiment. The coherent motion is due to the long-range cooperation of molecular…
Active nematics undergo spontaneous symmetry breaking and show phase separation instability. Within the prevailing notion that macroscopic properties depend only on symmetries and conservation laws, different microscopic models are used out…
We investigate the dynamical pathways of a geometric phase transition in a two-dimensional active lattice gas undergoing motility-induced phase separation. The transition is between metastable morphologies of the liquid cluster: a…
We study the effect of atomic scale surface-lubricant interactions on nanoscale boundary-lubricated friction, by considering two example surfaces - hydrophilic mica and hydrophobic graphene - confining thin layers of water in molecular…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Flow of dissipative particles driven by peristaltic motion of a tube is numerically studied. A transition from slow unjammed flow to fast jammed flow is found through the observation of the mass flux if the minimum width of the peristaltic…
The past few years have seen many advances in our understanding of the dynamics of polymeric fluids. These include improvements on the successful reptation theory; an emerging molecular theory of semiflexible chain dynamics; and an…
We use numerical modelling to study the flow patterns of an active nematic confined in a cylindrical capillary, considering both planar and homeotropic boundary conditions. We find that active flow emerges not only along the capillary axis…
We report on a series of experiments in which a grain-sized intruder is pushed by a spring through a 2D granular material comprised of photoelastic disks in a Couette geometry. We study the intruder dynamics as a function of packing…
The contribution of sliding-induced, atomic-scale instabilities to the kinetic friction force is investigated by molecular dynamics. For this purpose, we derive a relationship between the kinetic friction force $F_{\rm k}$ and the…
We demonstrate that edge currents develop in active chiral matter -- composed of spinning disk-shaped grains with chirally arranged tilted legs confined in a circular vibrating chamber -- due to boundary shielding over a wide range of…
The frictional dynamics of interacting surfaces under forced translation are critically dependent on lattice commensurability. Performing experiments in a trapped-ion friction emulator, we observe two distinct structural and frictional…
Active semiflexible filament collectives, ranging from motor-driven cytoskeletal filaments to slender organisms such as cyanobacteria and worm aggregates, abound in nature. Yet how activity and flexibility jointly govern their organization,…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal, in coexistence with its isotropic phase, in contact with a substrate patterned with rectangular grooves. In such a system, the nematic phase may fill the grooves without the occurrence of complete…
We address the problem of orientational order in frustrated interaction systems as a function of the relative range of the competing interactions. We study a spin model Hamiltonian with short range ferromagnetic interaction competing with…