Related papers: Spatiotemporal crystallization of an active fluid

We examine the scaling with activity of the emergent length scales that control the nonequilibrium dynamics of an active nematic liquid crystal, using two popular hydrodynamic models that have been employed in previous studies. In both…

Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…

Our understanding of phases of matter relies on symmetry breaking, one example being water ice whose crystalline structure breaks the continuous translation symmetry of space. Recently, breaking of time translation symmetry was observed in…

We investigate the dynamics of elastic capsules suspended in two-dimensional active nematic fluids using lattice Boltzmann simulations. The capsules, modeled as flexible membranes enclosing active internal regions, exhibit a rich variety of…

Hydrodynamic theories effectively describe many-body systems out of equilibrium in terms of a few macroscopic parameters. However, such hydrodynamic parameters are difficult to derive from microscopics. Seldom is this challenge more…

We investigate experimentally the dynamic phase transition of a two-dimensional active nematic layer interfaced with a passive liquid crystal. Under a temperature ramp that leads to the transition of the passive liquid into a highly…

We use continuum simulations to study the impact of anisotropic hydrodynamic friction on the emergent flows of active nematics. We show that, depending on whether the active particles align with or tumble in their collectively self-induced…

From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…

At equilibrium, the structure and response of ordered phases are typically determined by the spontaneous breaking of spatial symmetries. Out of equilibrium, spatial order itself can become a dynamically emergent concept. In this article, we…

We present a new microscopic model of granular medium to study the role of dynamical correlations and the onset of spatial order induced by the inelasticity of the interactions. In spite of its simplicity, it features several different…

Elongated active units cannot spontaneously break rotation symmetry in bulk fluids to form nematic or polar phases. This has led to the image of active suspensions as spontaneously evolving, spatiotemporally chaotic fluids. In contrast, I…

We consider a microscopic field theoretical approach for interacting active nematic particles. With only steric interactions the self-propulsion strength in such systems can lead to different collective behaviour, e.g., synchronized…

Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic and bacterial active matter. Whether collective crystallization phenomena can occur in groups…

Active nematics are an important new paradigm in soft condensed matter systems. They consist of rod-like components with an internal driving force pushing them out of equilibrium. The resulting fluid motion exhibits chaotic advection, in…

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…

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…

To develop an understanding of recent experiments on the turbulence-induced melting of a periodic array of vortices in a thin fluid film, we perform a direct numerical simulation of the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations forced such…

This work examines self-mixing in active nematics, a class of fluids in which mobile topological defects drive chaotic flows in a system comprised of biological filaments and molecular motors. We present experiments that demonstrate how…

Biological systems often operate at the boundary between order and chaos, transitioning from directed to irregular dynamics to achieve adaptability and robustness. Reproducing such transitions in artificial soft matter remains a central…

We demonstrate the emergence of a time crystal of atoms in a high-finesse optical cavity driven by a phase-modulated transverse pump field, resulting in a shaken lattice. This shaken system exhibits macroscopic oscillations in the number of…