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We study an intriguing new type of self-assembled active colloidal polymer system in 3D. It is obtained from a suspension of Janus particles in an electric field that induces parallel dipoles in the particles as well as self-propulsion in…
The cytoskeleton is an important subsystem of cells that is involved for example in cell division and locomotion. It consists of filaments that are cross-linked by molecular motors that can induce relative sliding between filaments and…
The interaction between a flexible polymer in good solvent and smaller associating solute molecules such as amphiphiles (surfactants) is considered theoretically. Attractive correlations, induced in the polymer because of the interaction,…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…
Exploiting the full potential of MBs for applications requires a good understanding of their complex dynamics. Improved understanding of MB oscillations can lead to further enhancement in optimizing their efficacy in many applications and…
The ordering of rod-like particles in soft, deformable containers emerges from the interplay of anisotropic interactions, geometric confinement, and boundary compliance. This competition couples internal particle organization to container…
Follower activity results in a large variety of conformational and dynamical states in active chains and filaments. These states are formed due to the coupling between chain geometry and the local activity. We study the origin and emergence…
We show that hydrodynamic turbulent cloud simulations naturally produce large filaments made up of a network of smaller and coherent sub-filaments. Such simulations resemble observations of filaments and fibres in nearby molecular clouds.…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
The conventional wisdom is that liquids are completely disordered and lack non-trivial structure beyond nearest-neighbor distances. Recent observations have upended this view and demonstrated that the microstructure in liquids is…
Many structural properties of conventional passive materials are known to arise from the symmetries of their microscopic constituents. By contrast, it is largely unclear how the interplay between cell shape and self-propulsion controls the…
When the motion of a motile cell is observed closely, it appears erratic, and yet the combination of nonequilibrium forces and surfaces can produce striking examples of organization in microbial systems. While most of our current…
Swarming behavior, where coherent motion emerges from the interactions of many mobile agents, is ubiquitous in physics and biology. Moreover, there are many efforts to replicate swarming dynamics in mobile robotic systems which take…
Crosslinked semi-flexible and flexible filaments that are actively deformed by molecular motors occur in various natural settings, such as the ordered eukaryotic flagellum, and the disordered cytoskeleton. The deformation of these composite…
The motion of active polymers in a porous medium is shown to depend critically on flexibilty, activity and degree of polymerization. For given Peclet number, we observe a transition from localisation to diffusion as the stiffness of the…
We demonstrate that internal pivot-like defects, arising from rigor mutant motor proteins that bind without stepping, fundamentally reshape the dynamics of semiflexible filaments in two-dimensional motility assays. Using large-scale…
Disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks exhibit a low linear elastic shear modulus at small strains, but stiffen dramatically at high strains. Experiments have shown that the elastic modulus can increase by up to three…
The motion of flexible fibers through structured fluidic environments is ubiquitous in nature and industrial applications. Most often, their dynamics results from the complex interplay between internal elastic stresses, contact forces and…
We study a coupled dynamics of a network and a particle system. Particles of density $\rho$ diffuse freely along edges, each of which is rewired at a rate given by a decreasing function of particle flux. We find that the coupled dynamics…