Related papers: Shaping active matter from crystalline solids to a…
Active matter describes materials whose constituents are driven out of equilibrium by continuous energy consumption, for instance from ATP. Due to the orientable character of the constituents, active suspensions can attain liquid…
Collective motion is a phenomenon observed across length scales in nature, from bacterial swarming and tissue migration to the flocking of animals. The mechanisms underlying this behavior vary significantly depending on the biological…
Active matter research focuses on the emergent behavior among interacting self-propelled particles. Unification of seemingly disconnected paradigms -- active phase-separation of repulsive discs and collective motion of self-propelled rods…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
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…
Nonreciprocal interactions in active matter are known to generate exotic mechanical behaviors such as odd elasticity and odd viscosity. However, these phenomena have largely been studied in isolation, raising a fundamental question: Is…
Many key environmental, industrial, and energy processes rely on controlling fluid transport within subsurface porous media. These media are typically structurally heterogeneous, often with vertically-layered strata of distinct…
Foam is a canonical example of disordered soft matter where local force balance leads to the competition of many metastable configurations. Here we present an experimental and theoretical framework for "active foam" where an individual…
The field of active matter, and particularly active emulsions, is growing rapidly, with significant progress made recently on both theoretical and experimental fronts. Here, we summarize experimental research progress related to active…
Self-propulsion allows living systems to display unusual collective behavior. Unlike passive systems in thermal equilibrium, active matter systems are not constrained by conventional thermodynamic laws. A question arises however as to what…
Bacterial suspensions and other active fluids are known to develop highly dynamical vortex states, denoted as active or mesoscale turbulence. We reveal the pronounced effect of non-Newtonian rheological conditions on these turbulent states,…
It is well known that periodic potentials can be used to induce freezing and melting in colloids. Here, we transfer this concept to active systems and find the emergence of a so-far unknown active matter phase in between the frozen…
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.…
We consider a phase-separating mixture of active and passive fluids and explore morphological asymmetries of the emerging dominantly bicontinous dynamic emulsion. Two-dimensional numerical simulations reveal that the geometric and…
A variety of computational models have been developed to describe active matter at different length and time scales. The diversity of the methods and the challenges in modeling active matter---ranging from molecular motors and cytoskeletal…
The term "solid-state turbulence" may sound like an oxymoron, but in fact it is not. In this article we demonstrate that solid-state turbulence may emerge owing to a defining property of the solid state: the ability of a solid to retain its…
Active inference helps us simulate adaptive behavior and decision-making in biological and artificial agents. Building on our previous work exploring the relationship between active inference, well-being, resilience, and sustainability, we…
Collective locomotion of swimming and flying animals is fascinating in terms of individual-level fluid mechanics and group-level structure and dynamics. Here we bridge and relate these scales through a model of formation flight that views…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
Active matter concerns many-body systems comprised of living or self-driven agents that collectively exhibit macroscopic phenomena distinct from conventional passive matter. Using Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory, we develop a novel…