Epithelial cell monolayers exhibit traveling mechanical waves. We rationalize this observation thanks to a hydrodynamic description of the monolayer as a compressible, active and polar material. We show that propagating waves of the cell density, polarity, velocity and stress fields may be due to a Hopf bifurcation occurring above threshold values of active coupling coefficients.
@article{arxiv.1708.06687,
title = {Emergence of epithelial cell density waves},
author = {Shunsuke Yabunaka and Philippe Marcq},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.06687},
year = {2018}
}