Related papers: Active smectics on a sphere
Flagellated microswimmers B. Subtilis dispersed in a nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal form a living liquid crystal (LLC). The combination of the passive and active components allows us to analyze how the active…
The coalescence of droplets plays a crucial role in nature and modern technology. Various experimental and theoretical studies explored droplet dynamics in 3D and on 2D solid or liquid substrates. In this paper, we demonstrate the…
Smectic liquid crystals are materials formed by stacking deformable, fluid layers. Though smectics prefer to have flat, uniformly-spaced layers, boundary conditions can impose curvature on the layers. Since the layer spacing and curvature…
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 Landau-de Gennes model of liquid crystals is a functional acting on wave functions (order parameters) and vector fields (director fields). In a specific asymptotic limit of the physical parameters, we construct critical points such that…
We report on the emergence of stable self-propelled bound defects in monolayers of active nematics, which form virtual full-integer topological defects in the form of vortices and asters. Through numerical simulations and analytical…
Models for fluid deformable surfaces provide valid theories to describe the dynamics of thin fluidic sheets of soft materials. To use such models in morphogenesis and development requires to incorporate active forces. We consider active…
Defect dynamics in a thin active nematic layer is studied by asymptotic matching of solutions in the defect core and the far field. The analysis is facilitated by the correspondence between the 2D nematic and complex scalar field models.…
A recently introduced active phase field crystal model describes the formation of ordered resting and traveling crystals in systems of self-propelled particles. Increasing the active drive, a resting crystal can be forced to perform…
Using simulations of hard rods in smectic-A states, we find non-gaussian diffusion and heterogeneous dynamics due to the equilibrium periodic smectic density profiles, which give rise to permanent barriers for layer-to-layer diffusion. This…
Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…
We study the linear stability of an isotropic active fluid in three different geometries: a film of active fluid on a rigid substrate, a cylindrical thread of fluid, and a spherical fluid droplet. The active fluid is modeled by the…
Motivated by observations of heterogeneous domain structure on the surface of cells, we consider a minimal model to describe the dynamics of phase separation on the surface of a spherical particle. Finite-size effects on the curved particle…
We present the phase diagram of a system of mesogenic top-shaped molecules based on the Parsons- Lee density functional theory and Monte Carlo simulation. The molecules are modeled as a hard spherocylinder with a hard sphere embedded in its…
We investigate shear-induced crystallization in a very dense flow of mono-disperse inelastic hard spheres. We consider a steady plane Couette flow under constant pressure and neglect gravity. We assume that the granular density is greater…
We study the collective dynamics of self-propelled rods in an inhomogeneous motility field. At the interface between two regions of constant but different motility, a smectic rod layer is spontaneously created through aligning interactions…
The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The colloidal rods…
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…
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…
The motion of topological defects is an important feature of the dynamics of all liquid crystals, and is especially conspicuous in active liquid crystals. Understanding defect motion is a challenging theoretical problem, because the…