Related papers: Maximally mixing active nematics
Dense active matter, from bacterial suspensions and microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins to cellular monolayers and synthetic Janus particles, is characterised by mesoscale turbulence, the emergence of chaotic flow structures. By…
Efficient nutrient mixing is crucial for the survival of bacterial colonies and other living systems. This raises the question of whether the optimization of mixing through the emergence of active turbulent motion in bacterial swarms played…
In microtubule-based active nematics, motor-driven extensile motion of microtubule bundles powers chaotic large-scale dynamics. We quantify the interfilament sliding motion both in isolated bundles and in a dense active nematic. The…
Topological chaos relies on the periodic motion of obstacles in a two-dimensional flow in order to form nontrivial braids. This motion generates exponential stretching of material lines, and hence efficient mixing. Boyland et al. [P. L.…
Active matter consists of self-propelled elements exhibits fascinating collective motions ranging from biological to artificial systems. Among wide varieties of active matter systems, reconstituted bio-filaments moving on molecular motor…
We study phase-separating fluid mixtures as they demix in the presence of chemical reactions that maintain them away from thermodynamic equilibrium. We show that in such chemically active emulsions the interplay of chemical reactions, phase…
By means of a novel variational approach we study ergodic properties of a model of a multi lane traffic flow, considered as a (deterministic) wandering of interacting particles on an infinite lattice. For a class of initial configurations…
We numerically investigate how spatial variations of extensile or contractile active stress affect bulk active nematic systems in two and three dimensions. In the absence of defects, activity gradients drive flows which re-orient the…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
Understanding active matter has led to new perspectives on biophysics and non-equilibrium dynamics. However, the development of numerical tools for simulating active fluids capable of incorporating non-trivial boundaries or inclusions has…
Ensembles of particles rotating in a two-dimensional fluid can exhibit chaotic dynamics yet develop signatures of hidden order. Such "rotors" are found in the natural world spanning vastly disparate length scales - from the rotor proteins…
The advection of passive tracers in an oscillating vortex chain is investigated. It is shown that by adding a suitable perturbation to the ideal flow, the induced chaotic advection exhibits two remarkable properties compared with a generic…
We explore theoretically the complex dynamics and emergent behaviors of spinning spheres immersed in viscous fluid. The particles are coupled to each-other via the fluid in which they are suspended: each particle disturbs the surrounding…
Topological defects play a central role in the physics of many materials, including magnets, superconductors and liquid crystals. In active fluids, defects become autonomous particles that spontaneously propel from internal active stresses…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
Rod-shaped colloids with attractive tips can form linear aggregates that may subsequently undergo hierarchical self-assembly into nematic fluids. Inspired by recent modelling efforts on chromonic liquid crystals, composed of discotic…
Nonlinearities in constitutive equations of extended objects in shear flow lead to novel phenomena, {\it e.g.} "rheochaos" in solutions of wormlike micelles and "elastic turbulence" in polymer solutions. Since both phenomena involve…
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…
Active nematics exhibit spontaneous flows through a well-known linear instability of the uniformly-aligned quiescent state. Here we show that even a linearly stable uniform state can experience a nonlinear instability, resulting in a…
By employing Molecular Dynamics computer simulations, the phase behavior of systems of rodlike particles with varying degree of internal flexibility has been traced from the perfectly rigid rod limit till very flexible particles, and from…