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Related papers: Active Fluid Patterning in Inhomogeneous Environme…

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The emergence of macroscopic order and patterns is a central paradigm in systems of (self-)propelled agents, and a key component in the structuring of many biological systems.The relationships between the ordering process and the underlying…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-12-02 Jonas Denk , Erwin Frey

Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…

Viewed under a fluorescence microscope, the actomyosin cytoskeleton presents vivid streaks of lines together with persistent oscillatory waves. Using an active hydrodynamic approach, we show how a uniform distribution of single or mixture…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-04-25 Ayan Roychowdhury , Saptarshi Dasgupta , Madan Rao

Surface-driven flows are ubiquitous in nature, from subcellular cytoplasmic streaming to organ-scale ciliary arrays. Here, we model how confined geometries can be used to engineer complex hydrodynamic patterns driven by activity prescribed…

Biological Physics · Physics 2020-04-06 Xingting Gong , Arnold Mathijssen , Zev Bryant , Manu Prakash

Actin flow in the cortical cytoskeleton underneath the cell membrane generates mechanical stresses that shape the cell surface. We study this mechanism using a hydrodynamic model of a compressible active gel polymerizing at the membrane and…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-05-13 Kristiana Mihali , Dennis Wörthmüller , Pierre Sens

A hydrostatically stressed soft elastic film circumvents the imposed constraint by undergoing a morphological instability, the wavelength of which is dictated by the minimization of the surface and the elastic strain energies of the film.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-08-07 Manoj K. Chaudhury , Aditi Chakrabarti , Animangsu Ghatak

Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…

Quantitative Methods · Quantitative Biology 2022-10-10 Japinder Nijjer , Mrityunjay Kothari , Changhao Li , Thomas Henzel , Qiuting Zhang , Jung-Shen B. Tai , Shuang Zhou , Sulin Zhang , Tal Cohen , Jing Yan

A two-dimensional dense fluid of frictional grains is shown to exhibit time-chaotic, spatially heterogeneous flow in a range of stress values, $\sigma$, chosen in the unstable region of s-shaped flow curves. Stress controlled simulations…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-03-23 Matthias Grob , Annette Zippelius , Claus Heussinger

In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-11-01 Michael Czajkowski , Dapeng Bi , M. Lisa Manning , M. Cristina Marchetti

The advances in understanding complex networks have generated increasing interest in dynamical processes occurring on them. Pattern formation in activator-inhibitor systems has been studied in networks, revealing differences from the…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2015-06-09 Nikos E. Kouvaris , Shigefumi Hata , Albert Díaz-Guilera

The accumulation of self-propelled particles on repulsive barriers is a widely observed feature in active matter. Despite being implicated in a broad range of biological processes, from biofilm formation to cytoskeletal movement, wetting of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-12 Noah Grodzinski , Michael E. Cates , Robert L. Jack

Pattern formation often occurs in confined systems, yet how boundaries shape patterning dynamics is unclear. We develop techniques to analyze confinement effects in nonlocal advection-diffusion equations, which generically capture the…

Pattern Formation and Solitons · Physics 2025-09-11 Jan Rombouts , Michael L Zhao , Alexander Aulehla , Anna Erzberger

Phase separation in a low-density gas-like phase and a high-density liquid-like one is a common trait of biological and synthetic self-propelling particles' systems. The competition between motility and stochastic forces is assumed to fix…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-04-15 Pin Nie , Joyjit Chattoraj , Antonio Piscitelli , Patrick Doyle , Ran Ni , Massimo Pica Ciamarra

Recently, we proposed a self-propelled particle model with competing alignment interactions: nearby particles tend to align their velocities whereas they anti-align their direction of motion with particles which are further away [R.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-05-02 Robert Großmann , Pawel Romanczuk , Markus Bär , Lutz Schimansky-Geier

The elastic coupling between plastic events is generally invoked to interpret plastic properties and failure of amorphous soft glassy materials. We report an experiment where the emergence of a self-organized plastic flow is observed well…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-05-21 Le Bouil Antoine , Amon Axelle , McNamara Sean , Crassous Jérôme

One of the hypothesized functions of biomolecular condensates is to act as chemical reactors, where chemical reactions can be modulated, i.e. accelerated or slowed down, while substrate molecules enter and products exit from the condensate.…

Biological Physics · Physics 2024-07-02 Alexandra Shelest , Hugo Le Roy , Daniel M. Busiello , Paolo De Los Rios

A common feature of biological self-organization is how active agents communicate with each other or their environment via chemical signaling. Such communications, mediated by self-generated chemical gradients, have consequences for both…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-11-07 Babak Vajdi Hokmabad , Suropriya Saha , Jaime Agudo-Canalejo , Ramin Golestanian , Corinna C. Maass

We present here a number of processes, inspired by concepts in Nonlinear Dynamics such as chaotic advection and excitability, that can be useful to understand generic behaviors in chemical or biological systems in fluid flows. Emphasis is…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2007-05-23 Emilio Hernandez-Garcia , Cristobal Lopez , Zoltan Neufeld

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…

Proliferation is a defining feature of life. Through growth, division, and death, living systems consume energy and inject mass, breaking conservation laws and driving collective phenomena from biofilm formation to embryonic development.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-03-25 Nicola Pellicciotta , Luca Angelani , Roberto Di Leonardo