Related papers: Orientational ordering in active nematic solids
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…
The recent discovery of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases marks a major breakthrough in soft matter research. An intermediate phase, often observed between the nonpolar and the ferroelectric nematic phase, shows a distinct…
We study the flat phase of nematic elastomer membranes with rotational symmetry spontaneously broken by in-plane nematic order. Such state is characterized by a vanishing elastic modulus for simple shear and soft transverse phonons. At…
Spatially confined rigid membranes reorganize their morphology in response to the imposed constraints. A crumpled elastic sheet presents a complex pattern of random folds focusing the deformation energy while compressing a membrane resting…
The study of spindle-like cells as nematic liquid crystals has led to remarkable insights in the understanding of tissue organization and morphogenesis. In the characterization of this anomalous liquid crystal material, we focus on the…
Fibers of bent-core liquid crystals present an internal structure of a rolled smectic layer and can be used as optical waveguides. We used a field-theoretical Monte Carlo simulation to analyze the internal configuration of such fibers as a…
A propagating "beam" triggering a local phase transition in a nematic elastomer sets it into a crawling motion, which may morph due to buckling. We consider the motion of the various configurations of slender rods and thin stripes with both…
Mechanical deformation of amorphous solids can be described as consisting of an elastic part in which the stress increases linearly with strain, up to a yield point at which the solid either fractures or starts deforming plastically. It is…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit configurations in which the underlying ordering changes markedly on macroscopic length scales. Such structures include topological defects in the nematic phase and tactoids within nematic-isotropic…
We show that a suspension of non-interacting deformable particles subjected to an oscillatory shear flow leads to development of nematic order that arises from the phenomenon of phase synchronization. The synchronized state corresponds to a…
Coupling between flow and orientation is a central issue in understanding the collective dynamics of active biofilaments and cells. Active stresses generated by motor activity destroy (quasi-)long-range orientational order and induce…
The interplay between cytoskeletal architecture and the nonlinearity of the interactions due to bucklable filaments plays a key role in modulating the cell's mechanical stability and affecting its structural rearrangements. We study a model…
We study the ground state of two-dimensional classical electron solids under the influence of modulation-doped impurities by using a simulated annealing molecular dynamics method. By changing the setback distance as a parameter, we find…
The operation mechanism of nematic liquid crystals lies in the control of their optical properties by the orientation of underlying nematic directors. In analogy, electronic nematicity refers to a state whose electronic properties…
The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
We model within the framework of finite elasticity two inherent instabilities observed in liquid crystal elastomers under uniaxial tension. First is necking which occurs when a material sample suddenly elongates more in a small region where…
The formation of polarized signaling domains on cell membranes is a fundamental example of biological pattern formation. While such patterns resemble structures from equilibrium phase separation, they are intrinsically non-equilibrium,…
We study the dynamics of pattern formation in a minimal model for active mixtures made of microtubules and molecular motors. We monitor the evolution of the (conserved) microtubule density and of the (non-conserved) nematic order parameter,…
A range of monodomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers containing differing proportions of photo-isomerisable mesogenic moieties, which turn from a rod-like to a kinked shape upon ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, was studied. Depending on the…