Related papers: Active drive towards elastic spinodals
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…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
Active colloidal particles provide versatile model systems for exploring non-equilibrium physics in motile matter. To date, most experimental realizations have focused on spherical particles, largely due to fabrication constraints. However,…
The cytoskeletal component actomyosin is a canonical example of active matter since the powerstroke cycle locally converts chemical energy in the form of adenoside triphosphate (ATP) into mechanical work for remodelling. Observing myosin II…
Active matter, comprising many active agents interacting and moving in fluids or more complex environments, is a commonly occurring state of matter in biological and physical systems. By its very nature active matter systems exist in…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
The actin cytoskeleton in living cells generates forces in conjunction with myosin motor proteins to directly and indirectly drive essential cellular processes. The semiflexible filaments of the cytoskeleton can respond nonlinearly to the…
In these Lecture Notes we aim at clarifying how soft matter physics, and herein notably statistical mechanics and fluid mechanics, can be engaged to understand and manipulate non-equilibrium systems consisting of numerous (microscopic)…
The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…
Living cells move thanks to assemblies of actin filaments and myosin motors that range from very organized striated muscle tissue to disordered intracellular bundles. The mechanisms powering these disordered structures are debated, and all…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
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…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
Thanks to a constant energy input, active matter can self-assemble into phases with complex architectures and functionalities such as living clusters that dynamically form, reshape and break-up, which are forbidden in equilibrium materials…
In equilibrium, the collective behaviour of particles interacting via steep, short-ranged potentials is well captured by the virial expansion of the free energy at low density. Here, we extend this approach beyond equilibrium to the case of…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
Active stresses in biological cells and tissues drive many developmental processes. However, increasing experimental evidence suggests that additional mechanical interactions with surrounding material can play a crucial role in guiding…
Viewed under a fluorescence microscope, the actomyosin cytoskeleton presents vivid streaks of lines together with persistent oscillatory waves. Using an active hydrodynamic approach, we show how a uniform distribution of single or mixture…
These lecture notes are designed to provide a brief introduction into the phenomenology of active matter and to present some of the analytical tools used to rationalize the emergent behavior of active systems. Such systems are made of…