Related papers: Active Polymer Behavior in Two Dimensions: A Compa…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
The mechanical properties of cells, which influence the properties of the tissue they belong to, are controlled by various mechanisms. Bi et al. theoretically demonstrated that density-independent rigidity transition occurs in…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
Polyampholytes (PA) are charged polymers composed of positively and negatively charged monomers along their backbone. The sequence of the charged monomers and the bending of the chain significantly influence the conformation and dynamical…
Soft matter systems are common in nature and make up nearly all the essential components necessary for life, from cells to the organelles within those cells. The ability of these soft materials to deform is crucial for the proper…
Active turbulence is a paradigmatic and fascinating example of self-organized motion at large scales occurring in active matter. We employ massive hydrodynamic simulations of suspensions of resolved model microswimmers to tackle the…
From flocks of birds to biomolecular assemblies, systems in which many individual components independently consume energy to perform mechanical work exhibit a wide array of striking behaviors. Methods to quantify the dynamics of these so…
Remarkably, even under negligible inertia, the addition of microstructural agents can generate chaotic flow fields. Such behavior can arise in polymer solutions, leading to elastic turbulence, or from active, self-driven particles, which…
Two dimensional active fluids display a transition from turbulent to coherent flow upon decreasing the size of the confining geometry. A recent experiment suggests that the behavior in three dimensions is remarkably different; emergent…
We present a simple yet generic model for the behavior of a system of many surface-attached flexible polymers with rigid side chains. Beyond its potential application in describing the dynamics of the extracellular matrix of mammalian…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of flexible polymers confined in a square microchannel and exposed to a Poiseuille flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. The chain length and the flow strength are…
We study numerically the phases and dynamics of a dense collection of self-propelled particles with soft repulsive interactions in two dimensions. The model is motivated by recent in vitro experiments on confluent monolayers of migratory…
We consider the statics and dynamics of a flexible polymer confined between parallel plates both in the presence and absence of hydrodynamic interactions. The hydrodynamic interactions are described at the level of the fluctuating,…
We investigate the response of an excitable medium to a localized perturbation in the presence of a two-dimensional smooth chaotic flow. Two distinct types of flows are numerically considered: open and closed. For both of them three…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
We study the motion of dispersed nanoprobes in entangled active-passive polymer mixtures. By comparing the two architectures of linear vs. unconcatenated and unknotted circular polymers, we demonstrate that novel, rich physics emerge. For…
We investigate, using numerical simulations, the conformations of isolated active ring polymers. We find that the their behaviour depends crucially on their size: short rings ($N \lesssim$ 100) are swelled whereas longer rings ($N \gtrsim$…
Active-particle suspensions exhibit distinct polarization-density patterns in activity landscapes, even without anisotropic particle interactions. Such polarization without alignment forces is at work in motility-induced phase separation…
Active colloids and externally actuated semi-flexible filaments provide basic building blocks for designing autonomously motile micro-machines. Here, we show that a passive semi-flexible filament can be actuated and transported by attaching…
We study the spatio-temporal dynamics of a model of polar active fluid in two dimensions. The system exhibits a transition from an isotropic to a polarized state as a function of density. The uniform polarized state is, however, unstable…