Related papers: Active doping controls the mode of failure in dens…
Active fluids comprise a variety of systems composed of elements immersed in a fluid environment which can convert some form of energy into directed motion; as such they are intrinsically out-of-equilibrium in the absence of any external…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…
We calculate the effective forces on hard disks near walls embedded inside active nematic liquid crystals. When the disks are sufficiently close to the wall and the flows are sufficiently slow, we can obtain exact expressions for the…
Odd viscoelastic materials are constrained by fewer symmetries than their even counterparts. The breaking of these symmetries allow these materials to exhibit different features, which have attracted considerable attention in recent years.…
We analyze the dynamics of a passive colloidal probe immersed in an active bath using an optical trap to study three physical processes: (1) the non-equilibrium fluctuations transferred to the probe by the active bath, (2) the friction…
Strong particulate gels are widely believed to behave poroelastically in compression, e.g. in sedimentation, even though they consolidate irreversibly because of the stickiness of the particles. Particulate gels are usually adhesive as well…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Molecular-motor generated active stresses drive the cytoskeleton away from equilibrium, endowing it with tunable mechanical properties that are essential for diverse functions such as cell division and motility[1-5]. Designing analogous…
Using computer simulations, we study the dynamic arrest in a schematic model of colloid-polymer mixtures combining short-ranged attractions with long-ranged repulsions. The arrested gel is a dilute rigid network of colloidal particles…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
We investigate the dynamics of an active gel of bundled microtubules that is driven by clusters of kinesin molecular motors. Upon the addition of ATP, the coordinated action of thousands of molecular motors drives the gel to a highly…
Typical bodily and environmental fluids encountered by biological swimmers consist of dissolved macromolecules such as proteins and polymers, often rendering them non Newtonian. To mimic such scenarios, we investigate the motion of swimming…
The field of active nematics has traditionally employed descriptions based on dipolar activity, with interactions that align along a single axis. However, it has been theoretically predicted that interactions with a substrate, prevalent in…
Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…
Polymer gels behave as soft viscoelastic solids and exhibit a generic nonlinear mechanical response characterized by pronounced stiffening prior to irreversible failure, most often through macroscopic fractures. Here, we aim at capturing…
While the collective motion of active particles has been studied extensively, effective strategies to navigate particle swarms without external guidance remain elusive. We introduce a method to control the trajectories of two-dimensional…
With quenched disorder, we introduce two-dimensional active nematics suspended in an incompressible fluid. We write the coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations of motion for slow variables, viz. density, orientation and flow fields. The…
Brittle materials exhibit sharp dynamical fractures when meeting Griffith's criterion, whereas ductile materials blunt a sharp crack by plastic responses. Upon continuous pulling ductile materials exhibit a necking instability which is…
We study the elastic properties of a rigid filament in a bath of self-propelled particles. We find that while fully flexible filaments swell monotonically upon increasing the strength of the propelling force, rigid filaments soften for…
We employ computer simulations to unveil the translational and rotational dynamics of the self-driven chemically symmetric and asymmetric rigid dumbbells in two-dimensional polymer gel. Our results show that activity or the self-propulsion…