Related papers: Light-activated microtubule-based 2D active nemati…

Microtubules are filamentous tubular protein polymers which are essential for a range of cellular behaviour, and are generally straight over micron length scales. However, in some gliding assays, where microtubules move over a carpet of…

The cytoskeleton relies on diverse populations of motors, filaments, and binding proteins acting in concert to enable non-equilibrium processes ranging from mitosis to chemotaxis. Its versatile reconfigurability, programmed by interactions…

In vitro reconstituted active systems, such as the ATP-driven microtubule bundle suspension developed by the Dogic group, provide a fertile testing ground for elucidating the phenomenology of active liquid crystalline states. Controlling…

We study, via extensive numerical simulations, the force-velocity curve of an active particle advected by a steady laminar flow, in the nonlinear response regime. Our model for an active particle relies on a colored noise term that mimics…

Oscillatory flow in confined spaces is central to understanding physiological flows and rational design of synthetic periodic-actuation based micromachines. Using theory and experiments on oscillating flows generated through a laser-induced…

Active matter comprises individual units that convert energy into mechanical motion. In many examples, such as bacterial systems and biofilament assays, constituent units are elongated and can give rise to local nematic orientational order.…

We introduce a two-dimensional active nematic with quenched disorder. We write the coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations of motion for slow variables, viz. density, and orientation. Disorder strength is tuned from zero to large values.…

We present simulations of the dynamic critical state for a 2D superconductor with strong pinning centers, corresponding to a matching field twice the applied magnetic field. The sharp crossover between the plastic regime, at low current…

Cell crawling on flat substrates is based on intracellular flows of the actin cytoskeleton that are driven by both actin polymerization at the front and myosin contractility at the back. The new experimental tool of optogenetics makes it…

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 present polarization-independent optical shutters with a sub-millisecond switching time. The approach utilizes dual-frequency nematics doped with a dichroic dye. Two nematic cells with orthogonal alignment are driven simultaneously by a…

Atomic layer crystals are emerging building blocks for enabling new two-dimensional (2D) nanomechanical systems, whose motions can be coupled to other attractive physical properties in such 2D systems. Optical interferometry has been very…

We consider a phenomenological continuum theory for an extensile, overdamped active nematic liquid crystal, applicable in the dense regime. Constructed from general principles, the theory is universal, with parameters independent of any…

We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…

This paper presents a novel architecture for simultaneous estimation of highly accurate optical flows and rigid scene transformations for difficult scenarios where the brightness assumption is violated by strong shading changes. In the case…

In living cells, motor proteins, such as kinesin and dynein can move processively along microtubule (MT), and also detach from or attach to MT stochastically. Experiments have found that, the traffic of motor might be jammed, and various…

Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…

We consider a continuum model of active viscoelastic matter, whereby an active nematic liquid-crystal is coupled to a minimal model of polymer dynamics with a viscoelastic relaxation time $\tau_C$. To explore the resulting interplay between…

Microfluidics involves the manipulation of flows at the microscale, typically requiring external power sources to generate pressure gradients. Alternatively, harnessing flows from active fluids, which are usually chaotic, has been proposed…

In this work we present the first systematic framework to sculpt active nematics systems, using optimal control theory and a hydrodynamic model of active nematics. We demonstrate the use of two different control fields, (1) applied…