Related papers: Topological kicks enhance colloidal diffusivity in…
In many active systems, swimmers collectively stir the surrounding fluid to stabilize some self-sustained vortices. The resulting nonequilibrium state is often referred to as active turbulence, by analogy with the turbulence of passive…
Morphogenesis emerges from dynamic feedback among geometry, mechanics, and chemistry; however, disentangling these contributions in living systems remains challenging. Here, we focus on the interplay between geometry and mechanics by…
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…
The problem of low Reynolds number turbulence in active nematic fluids is theoretically addressed. Using numerical simulations I demonstrate that an incompressible turbulent flow, in two-dimensional active nematics, consists of an ensemble…
Brownian motion is a universal characteristic of colloidal particles embedded in a host medium, and it is the fingerprint of molecular transport or diffusion, a generic feature of relevance not only in Physics but also in several branches…
Motile living organisms routinely probe their surroundings to adapt in ever-evolving environments. Although synthetic microswimmers offer surrogates for self-propelled living entities, they often lack the complex feedback mechanisms that…
By means of classical density functional theory and its dynamical extension, we consider a colloidal fluid with spherically-symmetric competing interactions, which are well known to exhibit a rich bulk phase behavior. This includes complex…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…
At the surfaces of autophoretic colloids, slip velocities arise from local chemical gradients that are many-body functions of particle configuration and activity. For rapid chemical diffusion, coupled with slip-induced hydrodynamic…
Topological defects are a ubiquitous phenomenon in diverse physical systems. In nematic liquid crystals (LCs), they are dynamic, physicochemically distinct, sensitive to stimuli, and are thereby promising for a range of applications.…
The interplay between the chirality of many biological molecules and the energy injected at small length-scales as the result of biological processes is at the base of the life of the cells. With the aim of unveiling the connection between…
In two dimensional nematics, topological defects are point like singularities with both a charge and a phase. We study topological defects within curved nematic textures on the surface of a cylinder. This allows us to isolate the effect of…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
Using agent-based simulations of self-propelled particles subject to short-range repulsion and nematic alignment we explore the dynamical phases of a dense active material confined to the surface of a sphere. We map the dynamical phase…
We provide a comprehensive quantitative analysis of localized and extended topological defects in the steady state of 2D passive and active repulsive Brownian disk systems. We show that, both in and out-of-equilibrium, the passage from the…
Active fluids exhibit chaotic flows at low Reynolds number known as active turbulence. Whereas the statistical properties of the chaotic flows are increasingly well understood, the nature of the transition from laminar to turbulent flows as…
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…
Colloidal particles in liquid crystals tend to induce topological defects and distortions of the molecular alignment within the surrounding anisotropic host medium, which results in elasticity-mediated interactions not accessible to their…
Topological defects are a conspicuous feature of active liquid crystals that have been associated with important morphogenetic transitions in organismal development. Robust development thus requires a tight control of the motion and…
Topological defects in active polar fluids exhibit complex dynamics driven by internally generated stresses, reflecting the deep interplay between topology, flow, and non-equilibrium hydrodynamics. Feedback control offers a powerful means…