Related papers: Microswimmers knead nematics into cholesterics
"Active nematics" are orientationally ordered but apolar fluids composed of interacting constituents individually powered by an internal source of energy. When activity exceeds a system-size dependent threshold, spatially uniform active…
In active nematic liquid crystals activity is able to drive chaotic spatiotemporal flows referred to as active turbulence. Active turbulence has been characterized through theoretical and experimental work as a low Reynolds number…
Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…
Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…
Micro-swimmers such as bacteria perform random walks known as run-and-tumbles to move up chemo-attractant gradients and as a result aggregate with others. It is also known that such micro-swimmers can self-organize into macroscopic patterns…
Active solids emerge from self-actuating components interacting with each other to form crystalline patterns. In equilibrium, commensurability underpins our understanding of nanoscale friction and particle-level dynamics of crystals.…
Coupling between flow and orientation is a central issue in understanding the collective dynamics of active biofilaments and cells. Active stresses generated by motor activity destroy (quasi-)long-range orientational order and induce…
We study numerically the hydrodynamics of a self-propelled particle system, consisting of spherical squirmers sedimented on a flat surface. We observe the emergence of dynamic structures, due to the interplay of particle-particle and…
Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…
There is a recent interest in studying odd elasticity in soft solids. Current focus has been on simple solids. However, many soft solids are structured and can exhibit nematic elasticity or viscoelasticity. Here we generalize the concept of…
Microorganisms living in microfluidic environments often form multi-species swarms, where they can leverage collective motions to achieve enhanced transport and spreading. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of physical understandings of…
The habitat of microorganisms is typically complex and viscoelastic. A natural question arises: Do polymers in a suspension of active swimmers enhance chaotic motion or promote orientational order? We address this issue by performing…
Recent experiments on vesicles formed from block copolymers with liquid-crystalline side-chains reveal a rich variety of vesicle morphologies. The additional internal order ("structure") developed by these self-assembled block copolymer…
We report the first experimental realization of a chiral artificial microswimmer exhibiting the helical motion. We found that a cholesteric liquid crystal droplet with a helical director field swims in a helical path driven by the Marangoni…
Particle tracking passive microrheology in 8CB liquid crystals is used to redefine the precessional motion of the orientation of nematic director in liquid crystals. Physical origin of tumbling director in presence of presmectic clusters…
Active particles in anisotropic, viscoelastic fluids experience competing stresses which guide their trajectories. An aligned suspension of particles can trigger a hydrodynamic bend instability, but the elasticity of the fluid can drive…
Liquids in systems with spherically symmetric interactions are not thermodynamically stable when the range of the attraction is reduced sufficiently. However, these metastable liquids have lifetimes long enough that they are readily…
In their search for metabolic resources microbes swim through viscous environments that present physical anisotropies, including steric obstacles across a wide range of sizes. Hydrodynamic forces are known to significantly alter swimmer…
Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…