Related papers: Integer Topological Defects Reveal Anti-Symmetric …
As the cover of embryos and adult organisms, epithelial tissues are subjected to substantial mechanical forces in tissue morphogenesis. However, the finite deformation behaviors of epithelial tissues remain largely unexplored. This study…
Regulation of topological structures and pattern formation is attracting wide interest in the field of condensed matter. Liquid crystals (LCs) represent soft matter with a remarkable combination of fluidity and anisotropic properties.…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
Topology transcends boundaries that conventionally delineate physical, biological and engineering sciences. Our ability to mathematically describe topology, combined with our access to precision tracking and manipulation approaches, has…
The topological properties of many materials are central to their behavior, with the dynamics of topological defects being particularly important to intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, active materials. In this paper, local manipulation of…
Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…
How can a collection of motile cells, each generating contractile nematic stresses in isolation, become an extensile nematic at the tissue-level? Understanding this seemingly contradictory experimental observation, which occurs irrespective…
We consider a phenomenological continuum theory for an extensile, overdamped active nematic liquid crystal, applicable in the dense regime. Constructed from general principles, the theory is universal, with parameters independent of any…
The presence and significance of active topological defects is increasingly realised in diverse biological and biomimetic systems. We introduce a continuum model of polar active matter, based on conservation laws and symmetry arguments,…
Present theoretical predictions for the entanglement entropy through topological defects are violated by numerical simulations. In order to resolve this, we introduce a paradigm shift in the preparation of reduced density matrices in the…
Recent studies have shown that packings of cells, both eukaryotic cellular tissues and growing or swarming bacterial colonies, can often be understood as active nematic fluids. A key property of volume-conserving active nematic model…
Active matter is naturally out of equilibrium which results in the emergence of diverse dynamic steady states, including the omnipresent chaotic state known as the active turbulence. However, much less is known how active systems…
Grain boundaries in extremely confined colloidal smectics possess a topological fine structure with coexisting nematic and tetratic symmetry of the director field. An alternative way to approach the problem of smectic topology is via the…
Topological defects are singularities in material fields that play a vital role across a range of systems: from cosmic microwave background polarization to superconductors, and biological materials. Although topological defects and their…
The density and correlations of topological defects are investigated numerically in a model of a d=2 elastic medium subject to a periodic quenched random potential. The computed density of defects decreases approximately exponentially with…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
We establish how active stress globally affects the morphology of disclination lines of a three dimensional active nematic liquid crystal under chaotic flow. Thanks to a defect detection algorithm based on the local nematic orientation, we…
Extended objects (defects) in Quantum Field Theory exhibit rich, nontrivial dynamics describing a variety of physical phenomena. These systems often involve strong coupling at long distances, where the bulk and defects interact, making…
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…
Motivated by recent experiments on the rod-like virus bacteriophage fd, confined to circular and annular domains, we present a theoretical study of structural transitions in these geometries. Using the continuum theory of nematic liquid…