Related papers: Generic multicomponent mixtures are multistable
In this article, we study the mixing properties of metastable diffusion processes which possess a Gibbs invariant distribution. For systems with multiple stable equilibria, so-called metastable transitions between these equilibria are…
Biomolecular condensates are complex droplets comprising diverse molecules that interact using various mechanisms. Condensation is often driven by short-ranged attraction, but net charges can also mediate long-ranged repulsion. Using…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
The dynamics of glass formation in monatomic and binary liquids are studied numerically using a microscopic field theory for the evolution of the time-averaged atomic number density. A stochastic framework combining phase field crystal free…
Multistability, the coexistence of multiple attractors in a dynamical system, is explored in bursting nerve cells. A modeling study is performed to show that a large class of bursting systems, as defined by a shared topology when…
Microbial communities display extreme diversity. A variety of strains or species coexist even when limited by a single resource. It has been argued that metabolite secretion creates new niches and facilitates such diversity. Nonetheless, it…
Phase separation in passive systems leads to uncontrolled droplet growth, limiting structural control in soft materials and cells. We identify a generic mechanism to arrest coarsening based on chemical interconversion between molecular…
We study the formation of a colloidal gel by means of Molecular Dynamics simulations of a model for colloidal suspensions. A slowing down with gel-like features is observed at low temperatures and low volume fractions, due to the formation…
Quantum droplets are a quantum analogue to classical fluid droplets in that they are self-bound and display liquid-like properties -- such as incompressibility and surface tension -- though their stability is the result of quantum…
Biological cells use droplets to separate components and spatially control their interior. Experiments demonstrate that the complex, crowded cellular environment affects the droplet arrangement and their sizes. To understand this behavior,…
We present molecular dynamics simulations on the structural relaxation of a simple bead-spring model for polymer blends. The introduction of a different monomer size induces a large time scale separation for the dynamics of the two…
It is known that, in continuous media, composite solitons with hidden vorticity, which are built of two mutually symmetric vortical components whose total angular momentum is zero, may be stable while their counterparts with explicit…
Mullins-Sekerka models with chemical reactions can lead to scenarios where droplets grow, become unstable, split, grow and undergo further division. These grow and division cycles have been proposed as a model for protocells and are…
Despite many attempts, ordered equilibrium microphases have yet to be obtained in experimental colloidal suspensions. The recent computation of the equilibrium phase diagram of a microscopic, particle-based microphase former [Zhuang et al.,…
Biological mixtures, such as the cellular cytoplasm, are composed of a large number of different components. From this heterogeneity, ordered mesoscopic structures emerge, such as liquid phases with controlled composition. These structures…
Compound particles are a class of composite systems in which solid particles encapsulated in a fluid droplet are suspended in another fluid. They are encountered in various natural and biological processes, for e.g., nucleated cells,…
Multi-component liquid mixtures can be both complex and fascinating, with some systems being amenable to simple experimentation at home, giving valuable insight into fundamental aspects of bulk and interfacial phase behaviour. One…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
We have studied the effect of small amounts of added liquid on the dynamic behavior of a granular system consisting of a mixture of glass beads of two different sizes. Segregation of the large beads to the top of the sample is found to…
Phase separation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatial organization inside biological cells. However, despite the clear relevance to virtually all physiological functions, we understand surprisingly little about what phases…