Related papers: Non-equilibrium pathways between cluster morpholog…

We present a numerical study of the phase behavior of repulsively interacting active polar particles that align their active velocities nematically. The amplitude of the active velocity, and the noise in its orientational alignment control…

Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…

We study the behaviour of catalytically active droplets in multi-component conserved mixtures affected by noise. Working in the thin interface limit, we analytically determine the state diagram of the system, characterized by multiple…

We study the liquid-solid transition in a collection of interacting particles moving through a dissipative medium under the action of a constant, spatially uniform external force, e.g. a charge-stabilized suspension in a fluidized bed or a…

Using Monte Carlo simulations we investigate some new aspects of the phase diagram and the behavior of the diffusion coefficient in an associating lattice gas (ALG) model on different regions of the phase diagram. The ALG model combines a…

Off-lattice active Brownian particles form clusters and undergo phase separation even in the absence of attractions or velocity-alignment mechanisms. Arguments that explain this phenomenon appeal only to the ability of particles to move…

Various biological and chemical processes lead to the nucleation and growth of non-wetting fluid bubbles within the pore space of a granular medium, such as the formation of gas bubbles in liquid-saturated lake-bed sediments. In…

Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…

We develop a mode coupling theory(MCT) to study the nonequilibrium glass transition behavior of a mono-disperse mixture of active-passive hard-sphere particles. The MCT equations clearly demonstrate that the glass transition is shifted to…

We provide a quantitative analysis of all kinds of topological defects present in 2D passive and active repulsive disk systems. We show that the passage from the solid to the hexatic is driven by the unbinding of dislocations. Instead,…

Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…

The main subject of this thesis rests on the study ---at different levels of description--- of instabilities in systems which are driven, i.e., maintained far from equilibrium by an external forcing. We focus here on two main classes,…

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…

For a large class of fluids exhibiting ultrasoft bounded pair potentials, particles form crystals consisting of clusters located in the lattice sites, with a density-independent lattice constant. Here we present an investigation on the…

When a nematic liquid crystal is confined in a porous medium with strong anchoring conditions, topological defects, called disclinations, are stably formed with numerous possible configurations. Since the energy barriers between them are…

We describe a phase transition that gives rise to structurally non-trivial states in a two-dimensional ordered network of particles connected by harmonic bonds. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that the network supports, apart from the…

Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…

We use a continuum, two-fluid approach to study a mixture of two active nematic fluids. Even in the absence of thermodynamically-driven ordering, for mixtures of different activities we observe turbulent microphase separation, where domains…

We study flocking in one dimension, introducing a lattice model in which particles can move either left or right. We find that the model exhibits a continuous nonequilibrium phase transition from a condensed phase, in which a single `flock'…

Motivated by unexpected morphologies of the emerging liquid phase (channels, bulges, droplets) at the edge of thin, melting alkane terraces, we propose a new heterogeneous nucleation pathway. The competition between bulk and interfacial…