Related papers: Controlling Topological Defects in Polar Fluids vi…

In the last few years, researchers have applied machine learning strategies in the context of vehicular platoons to increase the safety and efficiency of cooperative transportation. Reinforcement Learning methods have been employed in the…

We study the effects of inertia in dense suspensions of polar swimmers. The hydrodynamic velocity field and the polar order parameter field describe the dynamics of the suspension. We show that a dimensionless parameter $R$ (ratio of the…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…

Learning to navigate in complex environments with dynamic elements is an important milestone in developing AI agents. In this work we formulate the navigation question as a reinforcement learning problem and show that data efficiency and…

Active fluids display spontaneous turbulent-like flows known as active turbulence. Recent work revealed that these flows have universal features, independent of the material properties and of the presence of topological defects. However,…

We study how confinement transforms the chaotic dynamics of bulk microtubule-based active nematics into regular spatiotemporal patterns. For weak confinements, multiple continuously nucleating and annihilating topological defects…

Topological defects are ubiquitous on surfaces with orientational order fields. Here, we study equilibrium states generated by the feedback between geometry and nematic order on fluid membranes with an integer topological defect. When the…

Recurrent neural network-based reinforcement learning systems are capable of complex motor control tasks such as locomotion and manipulation, however, much of their underlying mechanisms still remain difficult to interpret. Our aim is to…

In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…

A salient feature of topological phases are surface states and many of the widely studied physical properties are directly tied to their existence. Although less explored, a variety of topological phases can however similarly be…

Topological defects play a critical role across many fields, mediating phase transitions and macroscopic behaviors as they move through space. Their role as robust information carriers has also generated much attention. However, controlling…

We demonstrate experimentally the feasibility of applying reinforcement learning (RL) in flow control problems by automatically discovering active control strategies without any prior knowledge of the flow physics. We consider the turbulent…

Topological defects are crucial to the thermodynamics and structure of condensed matter systems. For instance, when incorporated into crystalline membranes like graphene, disclinations with positive and negative topological charge…

Living microorganisms have evolved dedicated sensory machinery to detect environmental perturbations, processing these signals through biochemical networks to guide behavior. Replicating such capabilities in synthetic active matter remains…

This paper presents a novel AI-based approach for maximizing time-series available transfer capabilities (ATCs) via autonomous topology control considering various practical constraints and uncertainties. Several AI techniques including…

When considering flows in biological membranes, they are usually treated as flat, though more often than not, they are curved surfaces, even extremely curved, as in the case of the endoplasmic reticulum. Here, we study the topological…

Smart active particles can acquire some limited knowledge of the fluid environment from simple mechanical cues and exert a control on their preferred steering direction. Their goal is to learn the best way to navigate by exploiting the…

Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…

We present a continuum level analytical model of a droplet of active contractile fluid consisting of filaments and motors. We calculate the steady state flows that result from a splayed polarisation of the filaments. We account for the…

Active fluids, such as cytoskeletal filaments, bacterial colonies and epithelial cell layers, exhibit distinctive orientational coherence, often characterized by nematic order and topological defects. By contrast, little is known about…