Related papers: Active nematic liquid crystals under a quenched ra…

Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…

We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…

Using the classical density functional theory of freezing and Monte Carlo computer simulations, we explore the liquid-crystalline phase behavior of hard rectangles on flat and cylindrical manifolds. Moreover, we study the effect of a static…

We examine the influence of quenched disorder on the flocking transition of dense polar active matter. We consider incompressible systems of active particles with aligning interactions under the effect of either quenched random forces or…

Active nematics in two dimensions stir themselves efficiently through internally generated chaotic flows, largely driven by motile $+1/2$ disclinations. We investigate how this tendency toward chaotic fluid stirring can, counterintuitively,…

Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…

We provide a minimal model for an active nematic film in contact with both a solid substrate and a passive isotropic fluid, and explore its dynamics in one and two dimensions using a combination of hybrid Lattice Boltzmann simulations and…

We consider the isotropic-to-nematic transition in liquid crystals confined to aerogel hosts, and assume that the aerogel acts as a random field. We generally find that self-averaging is violated. For a bulk transition that is weakly…

Basing our arguments on the theory of active liquid crystals, we demonstrate both analytically and numerically, that the activity can induce an effective free energy which enhances ordering in extensile systems of active rods and in…

We investigate the orientational behaviour of a homeotropically aligned nematic liquid crystal subjected to an oscillatory plane Poiseuille flow produced by an alternating pressure gradient. For small pressure amplitudes the director…

We perform dynamical simulations of a two-dimensional active nematic fluid in coexistence with an isotropic fluid. Drops of active nematic become elongated, and an effective anchoring develops at the nematic-isotropic interface. The…

We consider the hydrodynamic theory of an active fluid of self-propelled particles with nematic aligning interactions. This class of materials has polar symmetry at the microscopic level, but forms macrostates of nematic symmetry. We…

Starting from a three-dimensional description of an active nematic layer, we employ an asymptotic theory to derive a series of low-dimensional continuum models that capture the coupled dynamics of flat and curved films, including variations…

We analyse the influence of a surface viscosity on the orientational dynamics of a nematic liquid crystal subjected to an oscillatory Couette flow. Approximate analytical solutions of nematohydrodynamic equations for small flow amplitudes…

Non-motile elongated bacteria confined in two-dimensional open micro-channels can exhibit collective motion and form dense monolayers with nematic order if the cells proliferate, i.e., grow and divide. Using soft molecular dynamics…

Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…

We numerically investigate the effect of a periodic array of asymmetric obstacles in a two-dimensional active nematic. We find that activity in conjunction with the asymmetry leads to a ratchet effect or unidirectional flow of the fluid…

We analyse the homogeneous instabilities in a nematic liquid crystal subjected to plane steady Couette or Poiseuille flow in the case when the director is pre-aligned perpendicular to the flow plane taking into account weak anchoring at the…

We examine fluctuation-induced (pseudo-Casimir) interactions in nematic liquid-crystalline films confined between two surfaces, where one of the surfaces imposes a strong homeotropic anchoring (ensuring a uniform mean director profile),…

Using a minimal continuum model, we investigate the interplay between circular confinement and substrate friction in active nematics. Upon increasing the friction from low to high, we observe a dynamical phase transition from a circulating…