Related papers: Active drive towards elastic spinodals
Active colloids and liquid crystals are capable of locally converting the macroscopically-supplied energy into directional motion and promise a host of new applications, ranging from drug delivery to cargo transport at the mesoscale. Here…
As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order…
Active colloids are microscopic particles, which self-propel through viscous fluids by converting energy extracted from their environment into directed motion. We first explain how articial microswimmers move forward by generating…
We simulate an experiment in which a colloidal probe is pulled through an active nematic fluid. We find that the drag on the particle is non-Stokesian (not proportional to its radius). Strikingly, a large enough particle in contractile…
In this review we discuss recent advances in the self-assembly of self-propelled colloidal particles and highlight some of the most exciting results in this field with a specific focus on dry active matter. We explore this phenomenology…
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…
The self-organization of active particles is governed by their dynamic effective interactions. Such interactions are controlled by the medium in which such active agents reside. Here, we study the interactions between active agents in a…
The cytoskeleton is an active composite of filamentous proteins that dictates diverse mechanical properties and processes in eukaryotic cells by generating forces and autonomously restructuring itself. Enzymatic motors that act on the…
Active bodies in viscous fluids interact hydrodynamically through self-generated flows. Here we study spontaneous aggregation induced by hydrodynamic flow in a suspension of stiff, apolar, active filaments. Lateral hydrodynamic attractions…
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…
The eukaryotic cell's cytoskeleton is a prototypical example of an active material: objects embedded within it are driven by molecular motors acting on the cytoskeleton, leading to anomalous diffusive behavior. Experiments tracking the…
Harnessing nanoscale motor proteins to actively control material shape is a promising strategy in nanotechnology and material science. One notable system is the actomyosin network, composed of actin filaments and myosin motor proteins,…
Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
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…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Alignment interactions in active matter are typically modeled as relaxational dynamics toward local consensus. In unbounded systems, this makes alignment effectively decoupled from local density and therefore unable to sustain self-confined…
Active matter drives its constituent agents to move autonomously by harnessing free energy, leading to diverse emergent states with relevance to both biological processes and inanimate functionalities. Achieving maximum reconfigurability of…