Related papers: Active topological strings in renewing nematopolar…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…

The persistent dynamics in systems out of equilibrium, particularly those characterized by annihilation and creation of topological defects, is known to involve complicated spatiotemporal processes and is deemed difficult to control. Here…

The ability to reroute and control flow is vital to the function of venation networks across a wide range of organisms. By modifying individual edges in these networks, either by adjusting edge conductances or creating and destroying edges,…

Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…

The translation and shape deformations of a passive viscous Newtonian droplet immersed in an active nematic liquid crystal under circular confinement are analyzed using a linear stability analysis. We focus on the case of a sharply aligned…

Flagellated microswimmers B. Subtilis dispersed in a nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal form a living liquid crystal (LLC). The combination of the passive and active components allows us to analyze how the active…

We study the dynamics of active nematic films on a substrate driven by active flows with or without the incompressible constraint.Through simulations and theoretical analysis, we show that arch patterns are stable in the compressible case,…

Activity can organize matter in unique configurations inaccessible to equilibrium systems, including a sundry of spiraling shapes seen in nature that range from galaxies to living tissues to fossilized stromatolites. How these dynamic yet…

Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…

We numerically study the coarsening of topological defects in 2D polar active matter and make several interesting observations and predictions. (i) The long time state is characterized by nonzero density of defects, in stark contrast to…

We here present two simplified models aimed at describing the long-term, irregular behaviours observed in the rheological response of certain complex fluids, such as periodic oscillations or chaotic-like variations. Both models exploit the…

Liquids composed of self-propelled particles have been experimentally realized using molecular, colloidal, or macroscopic constituents. These active liquids can flow spontaneously even in the absence of an external drive. Unlike spontaneous…

We consider the hydrodynamic theory of an active fluid of self-propelled particles with nematic aligning interactions. This class of materials has polar symmetry at the microscopic level, but forms macrostates of nematic symmetry. We…

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 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…

We show that "dry" active nematics, e.g. collections of shaken elongated granular particles, exhibit large-scale spatiotemporal chaos made of interacting dense, ordered, band-like structures in a parameter region including the linear onset…

We present a framework to take new measurements in nematic systems that contain active elements such as molecular motors. Spatio-temporal fields of stress, traction, velocity, pressure, and forces are estimated jointly from microscopy…

There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…

The role of boundary layers in conventional liquid crystals is commonly subsumed in their anchoring on confining walls. In the classical view, anchoring enslaves the orientational field of the passive material under equilibrium conditions.…

Active matter is a term encompassing particle-based assemblies with some form of self-propulsion, including certain biological systems as well as synthetic systems such as artificial colloidal swimmers, all of which can exhibit a remarkable…